Mes Amis, Mes Amours review

Lorraine Levy’s film is less a romcom than a sun-drenched fantasy of life among the expat French enclave in South Kensington. Middle-aged pals Antoine (Pascal Elbe) and Mathias (Vincent Lindon) are both divorced and decide to live together with their young children. The ‘joke’ is that they are temperamentally unsuited to being housemates - one is fanatically tidy, the other cheerfully disorganised - with domestic arrangements further complicated by Mathias falling for beautiful TV journalist Audrey (Virginie Ledoyen). Fortunately, nobody has to do much work in this friendly community of shop-keepers and bistro-owners, and there’s always time to pick up the kids from the local lycee. Working from her brother Marc’s best-selling novel, writer/director Levy elicits amiable performances from her cast. The storytelling’s all too predictable though, while the visual/verbal gags reap few dividends.