This is a sweet French film filled with quiet humor and not a mean bone in its body. Its warmth creeps up on you. No heroes, no villains. It is as gentle as a passing wind. While watching it, I pictured a fragile balloon blowing through a city unaware of the dangers all around it as it went along with no self-awareness. In this case Augustin (Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc) is that balloon. Childlike in his innocence and approach to the world, he is part Chance from Being There with a bit of Mr. Bean tossed in. He could be slightly autistic as he reacts to nothing around him and hates being touched till near the very end. He is oblivious though to what a social misfit he is – and goes about his life in his single-minded manner.  This is the second film in the Augustin trilogy directed by his sister Anne Fontaine. The first was simply Augustin in 1995 and then Oh La! La! in 2006. I can't find either of the other two with subs. I just enjoyed everything about this and would love to see them.


But what brought me here was not anything French but the luminous presence of Maggie Cheung. This was during her French phase while involved with Olivier Assayas - Irma Vep, Clean and this film. I noticed that Assayas is currently working on an Irma Vep TV series. Maggie had tired of the frantic pace of Hong Kong films and needed a break. She returned to HK to make a few more classics - In the Mood for Love and Hero but basically she had bid farewell to her HK career and movies over all. She is at the top of HK actresses for me along with Brigitte Lin whether in her classic Wong Kar-wai films or the Wuxias or her goofy comedies before her teeth were fixed. She radiated. And she still does here. With no attempt to be glamorous or sexy or cute, she steals every frame she is in with a smile or nod. And Maggie speaking French is heady stuff for a fanboy.


Augustin as in the first film looks for work as a film extra while he does odd jobs. In an early lovely scene he is playing a waiter who only has to deliver food and speak a line and keeps messing up. One of the actors is Fanny Ardant - who I adore - and during a break he tries to give her tips on acting that are absurdly funny and she just smiles in good humor. But what he really wants to be is an actor in kung-fu films. He goes to see one - an early Jackie Chan kung-fu film that I should have known but all those training sequences look alike! He records the sound and goes back to his room and practices Chan's moves. Someone asks him "Do they make kung-fu films in France?". Well, no. But he realizes that he needs to immerse himself in Chinese culture to do this right - so he packs up, says his goodbyes and moves to . . . Chinatown in Paris. 


But in its way it is a foreign country to him as he checks into the Shanghai hotel seemingly unaware that girls are hanging outside and constantly walking down the stairs with older men. When he hears the moans at night he just turns on his kung-fu recordings louder. He joins a martial arts school - tries to show them how the Tiger Claw should be done from films - but he hates being touched which is a problem  and at one point he faints. So he goes to see a doctor. Our Maggie. Her office is in the apartment of her cousins. She has just come from the Mainland and is trying to learn to speak French as she in fact had to for this film. Acupuncture is her specialty. The film sort of goes where you think it will but then not really and the ending is so perfect it should be bronzed.