Written by Linda
February 07, 2009
I've been learning a lot about the culture of France these days by renting a proliferation of those oh-so-sexy "Fronch" movies. Now, why I keep renting them, I don't know, because I usually end up getting restless and/or bored. Among the things I have learned: incest is popular, adultery is popular, everyone is ridiculously beautiful (at least the ones with the power), and people can very easily be swayed from one sexual preference to another. Oh, those playful and naughty French!
So the latest saucy entry manages to include a little bit of all those qualities. Nicole (Miou Miou... ahhh... oui! Elle est très belle!) and Jean-Marie (Charles Berling) are a bored 40-ish couple who own a dry cleaning business in a small city, and go out with their friends for drinks and entertainment at sexually ambiguous cabaret shows.... OK, now wait a minute. For a town that looks the size of Aberdeen, Washington, I was very impressed that small-shop owners hang out in nightclubs that feature drag performers groping each other. Not to mention these hard-working small-town folks go home with members of the cabaret troupe for, shall we say, va-va-voom personal encores, if you will. Well, for all I know, this is common in France, so let's move on.
Nicole and Jean-Marie get a bit mutually obsessed with this brother-sister drag act, and follow the two to their next performance in the next city. Through some complicated and unexpected circumstances, the ridiculously pretty brother Loic (Stanislas Merhar) ends up getting dumped by his sis, and moves in with the dry cleaning couple. Well! Can you say... "menage à trois" (after all, it IS the French who invented this saying)? Townspeople's tongues get a-waggin' and jealousies arise in the triangle, which, of course, leads to no good...
Dry Cleaning is watchable, even though it drags a bit in the middle (no pun intended). Miou Miou is as gorgeous as ever, playing a woman 10 years younger, and she provides the soul of the film. Charles Berling, as her husband, just can't quite match her appeal. And though Stanislas Merhar doesn't offer much depth as the seductive young man, you can't deny that he is ridiculously pretty, with his pouty red lips, tousled blonde hair, and dimples. Though you just know his Loic is nothing but trouble, you can't really blame the couple for saying, "Well, just one more night, then you have to go..."
