The title of Pierre Salvadori's third effort is the second part of a French expression concerning lies. In English, one would translate as "he's a compulsive liar". The chief subject of "Comme Elle Respire" partly revolves around the art of lying and this characteristic will also be prevailing in "Après Vous" (2003), perhaps Salvadori's finest hour.
Jeanne (Marie Trintignant) has the gift of telling extravagant stories about herself. But at the very beginning of the film, little did she know that due to this dangerous habit she would find herself in the heart of an abduction organized by a wretched gangster, Antoine (Guillaume Depardieu) and his two sidekicks, Barnabé (Serge Riaboukine) and Marcel (Jean-François Stévenin) to demand a ransom to her parents. Circumstances and her tendency to tell false tales led her to pretend to come from a rich family to an old lady but as we say: "walls have ears". Her parents actually come from a modest background and to complicate things a little, Antoine falls in love with Jeanne.
Pierre Salvadori kept some strong points of his first film "Cible Emouvante" (1993) which made it enjoyable. Like in his 1993 film, "Comme Elle Respire" has potent delineations of the characters which give the movie substance. Then, Salvadori films Jeanne's adventures on a communicative effervescent style with hilarious, preposterous moments. A sense of unpredictable in the development and the construction of the story gives it a fresh, original tonality. This is reinforced by the fact that Salavdori's effort is straddling two genres: detective comedy and sentimental film...
...and this is where the film shows some glitches. As it constantly fluctuates between these two poles, it unbalances the whole film. The transition from comedy to drama is often a little hard to follow and the denouement is laboriously solved. The final installment in Corsica is both an asset and a disadvantage. An asset because it cements Jeanne's elusive personality and a drawback because it stretches a little too far the film towards the sentimental domain.
But this honorable work shouldn't be decried all the same and the actors make it worthwhile which add to the justification of the screening of the film provided this lack of cohesion of the genres aforementioned above doesn't mind you.
