David (Emmanuel Mouret) is a French horn player and teacher who's moved to Paris and finds accommodation sharing a flat with Anne (Frédérique Bel). Just a friendly arrangement of course, as she's got someone in her life, although has she? And when they end up in bed together it's by accident, naturally: they've both forgotten about it by the morning, as they tell each other.
Anyway, David is in love with a nineteen-year-old student of his who's learning the French horn: Julia (Fanny Valette), who lives with her mother (Ariane Ascaride), who's surprised she's not got a boyfriend. But of course David's working on this, and although Julia's responses to his attempts to get her interested in him have proved a little lukewarm, Anne's parents have a place in Deauville where they can spend a weekend. And things look good for David: she doesn't seem to mind there's only one bed, and they're getting on well at the seaside.
Until, that is, restauranteur Julien (Dany Brillant) rescues Julia's handbag from a thief, they invite him back for a drink and he starts massaging Julia's shoulders, and David has that everything's lost look and spends the night out in the cold just smoking: it's a bit like in Vénus et Fleur with Fleur spending the night out on the beach when Vénus is screwing the local lothario, only Fleur was, er, full of happiness at the time with Bonheur. When he returns in the morning, Julien has just left and Julia is in love.
Of course, Julia expects Julien to phone him, but he doesn't. On the rebound, she gets with David (and they get a similar look from Anne when she sees it happening) and – much to mother's contentment, they start living together until, that is, David bumps into Julien. Now Julien – who by chance is the stocky guy who plays Rudolph the aggressive boyfriend in Fais-moi plasir ! – hasn't phoned Julia because he couldn't. And although he's not aggressive like Rudolph, he's lost his business because of the way he feels about Julia, and is really desperate to find her: can David help? David is the same kind of bumbling, stuttering, hesitant awkward guy as in other films he's played in, and obviously doesn't want to admit that he lives with her. But in the end, leaving Julien and Julia for five minutes in Luxembourg, he makes his exit from the jardin as the gates are being locked.
His loss is his gain: Julien (now of course united with Julia) finds him another flat, and what do you know Anne is looking for one two, and doesn't care that there's only one bed: it's not just a case of will-they-won't-they as much as how will they. I'd called this Emmanuel Mouret absurd-lite: the absurdities aren't missing, but are far more subdued than, say, the later Fais-moi plaisir ! And increasingly, Mouret brings to mind Truffaut: here particularly with the scene of David and Julia reading in bed reminding me of Domicile conjugal, the twist being that David's magazine is upside down.
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