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The Château review
:. Director: Jesse Peretz
:. Starring: Paul Rudd, Romany Malco
:. Running Time: 1:30
:. Year: 2002
:. Country: USA
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A small-budget indie film shot in digital, The Château throws together a couple of Americans and a few French countrymen and kicks back, making fun of the cultural clash that ensues.
When two American brothers, a dude (Paul Rudd) and black Internet entrepreneur (Romany Malco), learn they've inherited a French castle from an uncle, they decide to go to France to sell it. After a rather cold welcome, they have to deal with the resistance of the Chateau's staff and compete to seduce the French maid (Sylvie Testud).
The French have always had a love/hate relationship with the US. They proclaim hamburgers to be sacrilege but have Burger King and McDonald's on the Champs Elysées. They denounce the cultural invasion from Hollywood but have euroDisney near Paris. They complain about "uncivilized" American tourists but are fascinated with Las Vegas.
Well aware of that premise, director Jesse Peretz (the ex-bassist from the band Lemonheads) has fun with cultural clichés, playing the French against the Americans. The Paul Rudd character symbolizes the "stupid American" as seen by the French. He tries too hard to be cool, murders the French language and is too naïve and clumsy. The Romany Malco character represents the "evil" capitalist who is just looking for profit and doesn't care about the staff. The French staff, mainly composed of "French rednecks", is rude, closed-minded and sneaky. The only link between the two cultures is the French maid, another American fantasy. In the end, both sides have their pros and cons and the film avoids giving any easy judgment.
The Château doesn't pretend to be anything else than a low-key comedy and succeeds at this level. The actors were let free to improvise and Paul Rudd provides the comic highlights with his own very funny dialect and a couple of good monologues. Some French actors go sometimes over the top in some badly written unfunny scenes but overall that doesn't really harm the sympathetic feel of the movie.
An entertaining visit.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
Movie Reviews: from 2012 to present
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