Les Infideles: The Players

Oscar winning star Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Gilles Lellouche (Tell No One) star in a hilarious comedy exploring the triumphs and failures of male infidelity in all its deperate, absurd and wildly funny forms. From a sales conference hotel in the suburbs to a smart sex addiction clinic, from a swish Parisian nightclub to the glitzy meat market of Las Vegas, they launch themselves into the age old pursuit. Every time worn excuses are proferred; every trick in the book is played. The quest to get laid is on .....

Well thats what the blurb says. Dujardin is markedly less charming here in these 7 crass short films about male infidelity. The most notable vignettes involve an excruciating sales weekend where his obnoxious would-be cheater pursues every woman in the hotel, and a married couple being "honest" about their affairs in the best segment (which is the only one directed by a woman). Its not a patch of any of Woody Allen's sex comedies, in fact in the main, this French portmanteau is a deeply unfunny, vaguely misogynistic mess.  
THE ARTIST's Michel  Hazanavicious is one of the directors here as is Jean Dujardin himself. We get to see quite a lot of Jean and his pal as they have sex all over the place including finally with each other as of course despite all the womanising that is what they really want ... the end coda is rather amusing as they set up their new gay life.

Interesting though to see a new episodic film like those Italian ones I like (GOLD OF NAPLES, BOCCACCIO 7O, LE BAMBOLE, LE FATE) - this one though without the Weinsteins behind it has already been and gone without causing a ripple, another THE ARTIST it is not. If you want to see Jean at his best though go for those crazy hilarious OSS 117 spoofs CAIRO NEST OF SPIES and LOST IN RIO which I enthused about recently.