Priceless 2006

For gold-digging Irene (Audrey Tautou), being kept offers the best of society life. Apart from unwelcome interludes when she’s dropped back into the market, Irene is on to a good thing. Then one day she mistakes Jean, an opportunistic waiter, for a handsome millionaire, who is in no hurry to correct the impression. So starts this irreverent revision of Breakfast at Tiffany’s which soon turns the table on cunning Irene. Once he has been led, rather quickly and foolishly, to financial ruin, love-sick Jean finds his own sugar-mummy. The pair form a loose coalition of the willing as they teach one another how to maximise profits without conceding too much bottom line.

“Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise pioneered this template in 1932, but [Pierre Salvadori] provides a better-than-average update whose morally queasy elements are mostly eluded via dandy thesping. In addition to appealing leads, [Marie-Christine] Adam is particularly touching as a woman who is lucid about being appreciated for her cheque-book rather than her other attributes.” — Lisa Nesselson, Variety