Heartbreaker - 2010

If you watch one FOREIGN film with English subtitles watch this amusing romantic-comedy. You won't be sorry. It features Johnny Depp's wife (Vanessa Paradis) who is magnificent in this one. A great film that offers an escape to MONACO, too.

Heartbreaker (French: L'arnacœur) is a 2010 French romantic comedy film starring Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier and Andrew Lincoln. The bulk of the story takes place in Monaco.

The plot is centered around Alex (Romain Duris), his sister (Julie Ferrier) and her husband (François Damiens), who operate a business designed to break up relationships, but only where the woman is "not knowingly unhappy." The trio concoct elaborate, custom ruses to deceive the women. After each woman has fallen for his act, Alex tells her she has made him come alive again, but that it is too late for him. The women presumably each leave their relationships to seek men who makes them feel as Alex has. They are hired by a wealthy man (Jacques Frantz), who is a florist and possible gangster, to prevent the wedding of his daughter Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) to Englishman Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln).

The problem is that they only have 10 days to do so before the wedding. The task is further complicated because the couple appear to be in love and absolutely perfect for each other. They also could not find the usual "flaws" in the couple that they are used to looking for in couples to break them up. Alex, massively in debt to a loan shark through his own lavish spending on the business, is pressured into putting aside his honourable principles to complete the seemingly impossible job with only five days till the wedding.

The Heartbreak Kid - 1972

The Heartbreak Kid is a 1972 dark romantic comedy film directed by Elaine May, written by Neil Simon, and starring Charles Grodin, Jeannie Berlin, and Cybill Shepherd. It is based on the short story "A Change of Plan", written by Bruce Jay Friedman. Jeannie Berlin was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Eddie Albert was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It is #91 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs, a list of the funniest movies ever made. It was remade in 2007 as The Heartbreak Kid starring Ben Stiller and Malin Åkerman.

Before Sunrise - 1995 & Before Sunset - 2004

Experience the most interesting double-feature with these two films.   Begin with Before Sunrise and be introduced to Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one romantic evening together in Vienna, Austria.   The dialogue is wonderful (it's before texting when you can actually see the emotions in people's faces).   Follow-up Before Sunrise with Before Sunset when the same couple meets almost ten years later.   One won't be sorry with these films...but be sure it is screened alone or with a 'special someone'.   You have to really listen to all of the fantastic words they share.   This is the ideal romantic drama.

Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman that the director, Richard Linklater, met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989.  They walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night.  Originally, in the screenplay, who the two people were and the city they spend time in was vague.  Linklater realized that because the film is so much a dialogue between a man and a woman he knew that it was important to have a strong woman co-writer. He chose Kim Krizan, who had small roles in his two previous films Slacker and Dazed and Confused.  According to Linklater, he "loved the way her mind worked" - a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas.

In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote, "It's an attempt to make a mainstream youth movie with a bit more feeling and mysteriousness than most, and, in this, it succeeds".