"L'étudiante et Monsieur Henri" tells the story of a grumpy old man, who invites a young woman to live with him in order to make some money. While he isn't very welcoming at first, he soon develops a plan to make her end his son's marriage of which he disapproves heavily.The plot is well-known for French films, just think of "The Intouchables". This one ha its moments, it comes with great acting and has a smart sense of humor, at least in some of the situations. Sometimes it tries to be more artsy than it is but instead it is quite entertaining. Personally, I didn't like the last third of the film all too much because everything became a bit implausible and problems began to solve themselves while people pretended some situations never happened.All in all this is a light-hearted comedy that takes some well-known concepts and puts them together individually. What comes out is a film that lacks some courage but has its beauty.

A simple but deep story which borders the comic and the tragic as 3 characters from 3 completely different generations are faced with family challenges they cannot solve alone. Constance (Noémie Schmidt) has problems with her nerves when attending exams and struggles to know what she wants to do in life. She is now making the big jump from school to university, and moving to Paris. Henri Voizot (Claude Brasseur) is offering a room to let in his nice old style French apartment but his misanthropic, grumpy ways are not easy to handle and finds his match in Constance. The old man ultimately seeks her help to interfere in his son's marriage before he makes a big mistake. Will Constance lower to such ignoble task to keep her room and also her student career? A great Claude Brasseur as the grumpy old man and a promising Noémie Schmidt make us accomplices as we watch their events unfold in this theatrical play made into a film for us to enjoy.

I ask myself time and again... how do the French do this? They have a superb knack for taking a very simple story and turning it, without sentiment, into a beautiful, moving, intelligent and uplifting experience.This is another such gem. Beautifully acted by all players, a simple story of a girl who always 'fails' is turned into a story about how we all are... just humans who are trying to find our way. And sometimes it takes a stranger to see who we really are. Definitely one for parents who might need to put on their thinking caps.Highly recommended. Delightful.

I sometimes wonder if - should I ever relocate to France and have access to a steady diet of films of this quality - I would eventually become jaded and long for a London where, if you're lucky, you'll get a half- decent French film every other Fall. I doubt it because films as good as this are the oxygen of my cinema going despite what the trained seal at filmsdefrance says and if a certain actress is featured you could say I'll be there with Bels on. Now that she has just turned 40 Frederic Bel is not getting the ingenue roles she did in the three films she made with Emmanuel Mourcet - though this film is very much in the style of Mourcet - and here she is the much-married wife around whom the plot resolves given that her father-in-law, the great Claude Brasseur, despises her and bribes student Noemie Schmidt with the offer of a six- months free rental provided she will do her best to break up the marriage. Hardly War And Peace but entertaining and loaded with charm for all that. Put my name on the first DVD off the line.