Killer dinner date

>> James Huth's Serial Lover is a twisted French farce

by MATTHEW HAYS

James Huth has been basking in the laughter that accompanies screenings of his feature directorial debut, Serial Lover. The sub-titled film was a hit at this year's Cinemania Film Festival, picking up the Mel Hoppenheim Prix du Public, the award granted to the fest's most popular film.

It's a bizarre and twisted film, in keeping with the current trend towards dark and nasty comedy (think Happiness and Very Bad Things). Michèle Laroque, in a perfect performance, plays a woman stuck in a romantic bind: she has three lovers, all entirely different but equally appealing as long-term companions and father material for her children. At 35, she's concerned about the impending gong her biological clock will set off. At the suggestion of her best friend, Laroque gathers her three amours together for a dinner, at which she announces that she must choose among the three to decide whose ring she will accept. A showdown is inevitable, as the three men are all desperate to marry Laroque.

Through a series of weird mishaps, Laroque manages to inadvertently kill all three men. In a fit of panic about how to hide all three corpses, Laroque is soon shocked to find her friends have planned a surprise birthday party for her and have brought a rather massive gathering of revellers over to her pad to dance into the wee hours of the night. The police, meanwhile, barge in at inopportune moments to investigate a series of break-ins that have been occurring in her building. Laroque spends the rest of the evening dragging corpses from room to room and camouflaging them as passed out drunks to escape suspicion.

Huth says his first feature is a dramatic departure from the traditions of French comedy. Stealing equal parts Peter Sellers, Monty Python, Warner Brothers cartoons and the Marx Brothers, Huth has created a strange mélange of British and American comic styles. "The basic French farce has a husband hiding his mistress in the closet," explains Huth. "Serial Lover is far more absurd. Though the French appreciate it, their comedy is far less ironic [than British and American comedy]. This is a break with French tradition."

As the set-up would imply--with several undiscovered corpses being concealed throughout the film--Huth has also stolen a page or two from the book of Hitchcock, in particular his 1955 hide-the-corpse comic oddity The Trouble With Harry. "How much do I owe you for this comparison? Yes, I started writing the script after finishing reading Hitchcock/Truffaut [Truffaut's book-length interview with Hitchcock]. I wanted very much to play with audience expectations. The film starts as a dinner revolving around romantic choice. We're in a comedy, but then, life is not so simple. While dealing with her dilemma, Laroque is forced to face the truth about herself."

Serial Lover was well received in France, but its release date meant it was forced to compete with the wildly popular World Cup series. It then met with serious buzz on the North American festival circuit, where, upon seeing the film, Sean Penn promptly bought the U.S. remake rights.

Huth is clearly relieved at its success; he left the medical profession--much to the horror of his parents, both of whom are doctors--eight years ago to pursue his passion full time. "You only live once," he declares. "I've been watching films all my life, several a week. I realized: why pursue anything else?"

Serial Lover opens Friday, November 20 in its original French version