Heartbreaker
Short description
Alex Lippi makes a living by breaking up relationships. Together with his sister Mélanie and her husband Marc, he takes on clients who want a romance ended, working by seduction and following strict rules of his own: he never targets happy couples, and he never falls in love. Their success rate holds until a wealthy man hires them to stop his daughter Juliette's wedding, leaving Alex one week to win her over before she marries her fiancé on the Côte d'Azur. Juliette proves a far harder case than any previous assignment, since she shows no sign of doubt about the life she has chosen.
The film is the directorial debut of Pascal Chaumeil, whose later work includes A Perfect Plan and A Long Way Down. Romain Duris plays Alex, with Vanessa Paradis as Juliette, Julie Ferrier and François Damiens as his partners in the business, Andrew Lincoln as the fiancé Jonathan and Héléna Noguerra as Sophie. Laurent Zeitoun, Jeremy Doner and Yohan Gromb wrote the screenplay. Shot on a budget of about 9 million dollars, it returned roughly 44 million worldwide, a strong result for a French romantic comedy of its period.
On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from around 28,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.6 out of 10 from over 1,400 votes, while critics gave it 6.6 out of 10 across 77 reviews, so audiences and reviewers landed in much the same place.
What's left behind the scenes
- Screenwriter Laurent Zeitoun later recounted that the idea for the film came to him from an incident in his own past, when one of his cousins was in love, but her affections were not reciprocated, and Laurent then thought it would be a good idea to hire an actor who could improvise, and he would certainly make sure that the two would break up.
- Previously, Pascal Chaumeil had only directed for television, mostly commercials; this is his directorial debut in cinema.
- Caroline Duris played the pianist, and she is the sister of Romain Duris, who played the role of Alex. She is a talented pianist who previously appeared on screen with her brother in Jacques Audiard's dramatic thriller, 'Beating Hearts' (2005).
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