God Is Great, I’m Not (review)

Oh, the curse of being a starlet trying to follow up on a delightful breakout film. The world fell in love, blah blah blah, with Audrey Tautou as the sweetly fantastical Amelie, but here she’s Michèle, a far less charming young romantic — in fact, she’s so tedious and so caught up in her own bullshit that you’d like to smack her. Her sad, sad life — which involves a series of perfectly lovely and hunky French boyfriends, a fabulous job as a fashion model, and a fun and funky wardrobe — is simply too much to bear, and so she attempts suicide and fights with her mom and generally behaves like a spoiled brat. I think director and cowriter (with Alain Tasma) Pascale Bailly means for us to be charmed by Michèle’s “spiritual journey,” wherein she tries on various religions like new hairdos and revels in new kinds of amusing rituals without any of the philosophy penetrating her little head. You can practically smell the patchouli oil.