Priceless	by George Sax

If the publicity materials put out on it’s behalf can be relied on, Pierre Salvadori’s deftly amusing Priceless is intended, at least in part, as a Gallic reworking of, and homage to, Blake Edwards’ 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s. There are rough story-line parallels—both of them involve a young woman who makes her way by selling her favors to rich men and a young man in tow to an older woman—but the two movies are vastly different. Priceless is unlikely to remind anyone of Edwards’ broader, more blunt-edged and sentimental work.

Gad Elmaleh and Audrey Tautou in Priceless

If there’s anyone Priceless calls to mind, it’s Ernst Lubitsch and his elegantly witty 1932 comedy about a pair of confidence tricksters, Trouble in Paradise. Priceless isn’t nearly as deliciously acerbic, as beguilingly naughty or as stylish as that wonderful antique, but we can’t reasonably expect it to be. The era that produced it has long-since evaporated. (Autre temps, autre cinema.)

Salvadori’s movie has its own stylishness and allure. It’s also subtly but persistently French, or at least European, in its details and flavor. It’s as different from Edwards’ movie as it is from Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman, or, need we mention, that inexplicable current box office success, What Happens in Vegas, all of which involve unlikely romantic pairings.

The mismatched and comedically star-crossed pair at the center of Priceless are Jean and Irène (Gad Elmaleh and Audrey Tautou). He’s a bellman and bartender at an ostentatiously posh hotel in the south of France, a proficient, but somewhat diffident, put-upon young man, serving the imperial whims and obsessions of the intensely self-absorbed clientele. To most of them, of course, he’s virtually invisible, just part of the facility’s extravagant conveniences.

But not to Irène. She happens upon Jean at a very late hour in the lounge where he’s tending bar and mistakes him for a dinner-jacketed hotel guest. Irène is the mistress of a much older and very wealthy man whom she has restlessly left asleep upstairs. She’s taken with the cutely off-beat barman, an attraction that leads to a joint visit to the hotel’s royal suite.

She probably barely recalls this little adventurous interlude when she and her “fiancee” return to the hotel a year later, but Jean can’t forget it and is only too eager for a repeat. And when it occurs, it’s with predictably disastrous consequences. He loses his job and she her wealthy meal ticket. Irène sets off to systematically work her carefully annotated list of potential substitutes, and Jean sets off in pursuit of her, ostensibly to apologize for the deception.

What ensues, and how these two become accomplices in their exploitation of themselves and members of the vastly overprivileged plutocracy is perhaps best left unsummarized here. (It’s usually inefficient to try to briefly report on the intricacies of comedy and farce, and Priceless is both.)

Tautou is not only a very attractive presence, but a spirited and affecting comedienne. She captures Irène’s gradually conflicting impulses, and nails her self-possessed calculation that the realm of very expensive comfort can be accessed with enough guile and industry.

The Moroccan-born Elmaleh ably played a somewhat similar part three years ago in The Valet. He’s even more engaging here. His lean, pleasantly hangdog look and gracefully modulated performance achieve a witty, erotic chemistry with Tautou, as well as with Marie-Christine Adams as a self-aware, matter-of-factly cynical but not mean-spirited older woman who saves Jean from financial and legal embarrassment, and unintentionally helps him link up with Irène again.

Salvadori has an admirably light touch, an unforced control over the proceedings. Priceless is supple, pacey, and often drolly piquant.

One scene can stand for its mildly affectionate but amused and knowing attitude toward the protagonists. Irène vengefully lures the lovesick Jean into buying her a devastatingly expensive lunch, including, of course, caviar. She doesn’t really like the stuff, but, as she observes with naïve logic, “I’m sure when you like it, it must be delicious.”