1/ Take a Parisian couple, add olive oil with the Provence hot and dry greenery. 2/ Pretend you can make it look good and appetizing from the moment you chose the vegetables up to the very last line of the recipe. 3/ Did I forget something?
The theme, provided [Bienvenue au gîte] deserves one is 'Urbanites drop in the countryside.' 'Nature is the real thing but I am whom I am.' In this heavy general setting the 'auteur' adds supporting characters all around the couple instead of building a true couple. Thus we never see the evolution in their relationship. We wait for some funny things to succeed, and they're not many. And the greenery is nice; and some supporting characters are colorful but we simply do not care for the couple.
Of course there are some good ideas here and there. As for me there was less than a laugh every two reels and hardly anything touching in the whole hundred minutes. Anyway the whole thing is episodic, flat, with nothing to hang on except the characters of Peter and Angélique. Annie Grégorio and Michael Maloney show us something and THIS has something to do with motion pictures while their characters are no more elaborate than the rest of the cast.
Well, ideas don't make up for the lack of talent. You need to dump a thousand ideas before you keep one. Then another. Then you build a story. Then starts the hard work of fleshing up characters, hence flowing in dialog. Lubitsch? Who's that fella?
