Red Nose

Red Nose is almost a prototypical romantic comedy; it’s got all the elements we’ve come to expect from such a film, including two characters that initially hate each other, the phony break-up, and (of course) the final, triumphant kiss at the end. Félix (Patrick Huard) is a snooty critic who once gave a terrible review to Céline’s (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier) play, going so far as to suggest she quit writing altogether. So, when Félix is sentenced to a stint at Nez Rouge (a service that picks up drunk people and drives them home) after a DUI conviction, Céline uses the opportunity to get her revenge (Félix doesn’t realize who she is). Somewhere in the midst of pushing him down escalators and spilling drinks on him, though, Céline finds herself falling for Félix. Red Nose is very charming when it sticks to the more romantic elements within the story (ie a ride aboard a horse-drawn carriage), but director Eric Canuel (along with screenwriters Sylvie Desrosiers and Sylvie Pilon) spends a bit too much time on needless subplots. Such moments serve only as a distraction, and we’d much rather see Félix and Céline interacting with each other. The film runs close to two hours, a running time that’s overlong by at least 30 minutes; had some of the superfluous elements been excised, there’s no doubt that Red Nose would be an ideal romantic comedy. Still, Canuel does a nice job of infusing the story with bursts of style (the film is a marked improvement over Pig’s Law, a derivative thriller from 2001), and the two leads are incredibly appealing in their roles.

*** out of ****