Priceless

This is an Audrey Tautou vehicle from two years ago, just now hitting our freedom-loving shores from distant Surrenderstan. Tautou plays a high-class hustler who loses her sugar daddy when she accidentally sleeps with a charming bellman. Gad Elmaleh, who deserves to be famous even though his name sounds like a Middle Eastern desert topping, plays the bellman who loses his job when he’s found boffing the attractive Tautou in one of his hotel’s finer suites. The two then set out to find new sources of revenue through sex and pouting, and the whole thing becomes a sort of early-1960s-style romantic comedy. It’s screwball and funny, and the leads are painfully cute and charming. Of course, the whole thing is a stretch, and the ultimate romantic decisions make no sense, but this isn’t meant to be a scientific study on pair-bonding. It’s just a trifling film good for a few larfs and a quick glimpse of French lady- and man-flesh.