Arts and Cultural Response - Post 1

Every once in a while during French Class our teacher passed around a flyer for a French movie that was showing in a lecture hall a night during the week. She explained that most French movies were usually depressing, heavy, and emotional but this one was not. It was a comedy. I chose to go watch the movie because I figured it could be interesting and I was curious to see the difference between French and American Movies. The only things I associate with French movies are silent films or movies dramatic with French language. I was hoping to change this stereotype. The Movie was called Heart Breaker. It was about a man, Alex Lippi who got paid to break up couples. He would be secretly hired by a friend or relative of the couple and paid some of the money upfront. He would seduce the woman in the relationship and convince them that they were too good for their boyfriends. Then if they broke up he would be paid the rest of what he as promised and never see any of them again. He did have some rules, however; he would only break up the couple if one or the other was unhappy, and he would never do anything more than kiss the girls. Before finding the women he did a lot of research on them so he would be sure to not fail. The main scenario in the movie was about one girl whose father had hired Alex Lippi because he believed that his daughter’s boyfriend was in a relationship with her because her family was rich. He also thought she had changed from her once care-free and happy self. Some of the cultural differences I noticed in the French movie compared to an American movie were the main characters in the movie. The main male and female characters in the movie were supposed to be attractive and I thought that if the movie was made in America the main characters would have looked different. I attribute that to how the different cultures in the two countries make it so French people and American people consider different types of people to be attractive. The scenery in the French movie was also very different from what the scenery would have been like in an American movie. The French cities had different architecture. They drove mopeds around the small alleys in the cities unlike most people in American cities. I noticed that the clothes worn in the French movie were similar to the clothes that would have been worn in an American movie. I was also surprised at the similarity of the jokes. Many of the jokes made in the French movie were similar to ones made in American comedies. Overall I enjoyed watching the movie and was slightly surprised to see how similar Heart Breaker was to modern American Movies despite the different language and culture. Maybe this goes to show that humor is universal.