What do you get when you mix the picturesque side of Old Quebec and the charm of Évelyne Brochu with the comical and prank sense of Zach Braff? French girlan uninhibited romantic comedy full of good feelings, which embraces with excess passion all the clichés of the genre.
Gordon Kinski (Braff) teaches English at a Brooklyn high school. He enjoys perfect happiness with Sophie Tremblay (Brochu), a Quebecer working as a sous chef in a renowned restaurant in New York. Their future, however, is put at stake when Sophie is offered an interview for the position of executive chef in a Michelin-starred establishment at Château Frontenac.
A big supporter of his sweetheart’s ambitions, Gordon agrees to follow her and settle temporarily on the Tremblay family farm, in Charlevoix, and share the daily life of his in-laws. In this environment where he stands out in every way, the American will never stop getting his feet wet. When he learns that Ruby, Sophie’s future boss, is also his former lover, Gordon goes astray until he commits the ultimate blunder…
Supported by a solid and efficient cast – Luc Picard, Vanessa Hudgens and Antoine Olivier Pilon all carve out a place for themselves – French girl takes advantage of the pictorial landscapes of the Old Capital and the obvious complicity between its pair of lovers to revisit with a certain nostalgia and remarkable energy the codes of romantic comedy, with all the downsides that this implies.
Thus, although Montreal directors James A. Wood and Nicolas Wright attempt to inject a good dose of modernity into their screenplay, they exploit a narrative pattern seen and revisited – a suspicious father, an antihero as clumsy as well-intentioned, an enemy Machiavellian, comic secondary characters, but devoid of substance – at the risk of getting bogged down in caricature.
Quebecers are no exception in this film which depicts them as the heirs of a bucolic, libertine and poetic France. Several good ideas, notably those linked to the economic difficulties of farmers and the burden placed on the next generation, are left in the lurch by candy-pink reversals which we can easily appreciate for what they are.
Even if some gags miss their target, Zach Braff manages to arouse laughter with his adorable blunders. However, we are sorry that the benevolence and feminism displayed by this character are tarnished by a jealousy tinged with contempt and prejudice that the screenplay struggles to discourage, culminating in a finale that makes you want to hold your head in both hands.