In a motorway bathroom, two motorists are drying their hands at the washbasins. One turns and stares at the other. He holds him in his gaze for a long, long time. The second motorist notices, and turns to face the other. He matches his gaze, but the first man does not flinch. Finally, he speaks: "We know each other." From the moment we meet him, we realise there is something not quite right about Harry. This film is peppered with deliciously tense moments like that opening encounter. Harry recites a poem, Harry buys a car, Harry turns up for a visit, and every time little hand-grenades of appropriacy and etiquette go off. And as time passes, it is more than social propriety that is breached.Harry, He's Here to Help is exquisitely observed. Every parent will empathise with the opening car journey with three cranky kids. Put-upon Dad Michel (Laurent Lucas), after the car journey from hell, has the parents from hell to deal with. The parenting of young children is portrayed authentically, as is a long-term marriage gone rancid. Harry (a very scary Sergi López) may be signalling pathology with his crisply ironed shirts, clueless girlfriend, and inability to listen, but who can blame Michel and Claire (Mathilde Seigner) for missing the signs when they have so much more to contend with in their lives, matters for which Harry offers temporary respite. As Claire says, they are quite simply exhausted.In the second half of the film the plot accelerates, and the character portraiture suffers slightly. Michel's younger brother seems to say exactly, and only, the wrong things. He serves merely to push Harry's buttons. Interestingly, a slightly surreal note creeps in, signalled by Michel's obsession with eggs. Harry drives so fast the car seems to take flight - then turns up, apparently from a crash, without a mark on him, his perfectly ironed shirt still crease free. Are we now in Michels' dream? Or one of his stories? Harry is still a visceral threat, and is dealt with in the only way that can set Michel free.Tense, scary and absurd in all the right places, this film evokes Hitchcock, Sexy Beast, Kitano and other lofty references, while remaining a unique, primarily visual and hence visceral piece. Highly recommended.

I finally watched it, been on my to-see list ever since it came out. Great film that perfectly fulfilled my expectations. The only advice I can give, is don't expect to be overwhelmed by the time the film ends. Though it gets pretty demented at times, its ways are strangely subtle. If you've liked Michael Haneke's "Funny Games", then you should not hesitate to see this French film too.Michel and Clair are travelling by car to their remote summer house on the outskirts in Switzerland. Taking some time off to renovate things & spending a holiday with their little kids. Still in French, at a highway rest-stop, Michel encounters Harry, who claims to be an old schoolmate of him. Michel has no instant recollection of what all Harry has to say, but politely plays along, clearly avoiding any offense to Harry. And when Harry, accompanied by his sex doll wife Prune, kindly suggests to drive from France to Switzerland together, in separate cars, Michel agrees. His wife Clair, hesitantly reluctant at first, ultimately consents. The moral of this set-up? Trust your wife's female intuition. Michel just made a big mistake.From the moment Sergi López gets introduced as the friendly Harry (at the start of the film), director Dominik Moll manages to saddle you up with an uncomfortable feeling. And very slowly, it all becomes more and more unsettling as the film proceeds. The events & complications portrayed, make excellent use of the isolated setting that our family inhabits. The environment itself poses absolutely no threat and for once, it's also not the locals our outsider family should fear. The bad things will come from someone they've already invited into their comfort zone. And by the time they start realizing that, bad things are already getting worse.A big merit of this film, is undoubtedly the fact that Moll put real characters into realistic situations. And he does all this by not exaggerating or emphasizing details, but keeping things simple instead. While Harry, and subsequently his wife Prune also, provide all the necessary abnormality in this every-day plot, it's the characterization of the family that makes this film feel familiar and real. It's the little things, like kids getting annoying on the backseat of the car during a long summer drive. Or Michel's parents having the desire to meddle & help out with his undertakings, often more uncalled for than not so. Michel's mother making a subtle inquiry about his wife, indicating us she has her own thoughts on her son's marriage. These little details are irrelevant to the plot, but they make real humans out of the characters. And while you pick up on these subtleties, it enhances the awareness of the fact that Harry's abnormal behaviour is seeping into the lives of these very normal people. Even in scenes where Harry is not featured, you keep him in mind, because at most given moments he will always be in the company of another family member on another location. A splendid way to keep the viewer on his toes in a slow but steady moving film."Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien" is by no means explicit, but it's still an effectively disturbing film. At times slightly comedic, due to Harry's impossible behaviour. Lòpez strikes the right note with his performance between overtly friendliness & plain craziness. At no point he goes shamelessly over the top, nor does the film really feature any excessive outbursts of hard on-screen violence, and that really works for the better. The mild brilliance of this film, lies with the question as to what Harry's motivation is and what the outcome of it all will be. Do not expect a big mystery to be revealed. Do not expect a puzzle from the past explained. Do not expect grotesque bloodshed and violence. Expect subtlety and finesse to great effect.

Harry's character reminds me of quite a few strange people I've met in my life (fortunately not to that extent) and I think Moll and Lopez did a pretty good job at making us feel terribly uncomfortable. Harry though not talking new age and flying saucers is easy to spot as first class weirdo with an underlying sickly obsession for Michel. Bad luck for Michel. The obsession probably sprouted during the time they shared at high school and suddenly knows no boundaries. With obvious manipulative tricks he manages to intrude Michel's family life only to end in absolute horror. In this regard, I can't stop thinking of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley, Ferdinand/Freddy (The Collector) and Evelyn Draper ('Play Misty for me'). Despite I enjoyed this film for all the untied subplots and the truly scary weird repulsive Harry, it could have been developed much further psychologically than it is. Michel at some point seems to lose all common sense and moral (which was an interesting idea) then shifts back to 'reason' which lead to a rather boring and unconvincing ending: Michel driving the soundproof, aircon'd 4x4 car Harry has gifted him like nothing ever happened (parents, brother, Harry's girlfriend and Harry all together dead in the cesspool). In my opinion that's the weakness of the film.

Evil dentists are everywhere: Think "The Little Shop of Horrors", "The Whole Nine Yards", "Punch-Drunk Love", "Marathon Man", and, of course, "Brazil". But Michel's dad (Dominiqze Rozan) adds a new touch. A long-retired doddering dentist, the old man insists on a check-up whenever his son (Laurent Lucas) is visiting. Like Michel hadn't got enough to worry about without opening wide for daddy's drill. He is all but broke, and his vacation home is going to pieces. As is his marriage to classy Claire (Mathilde Seigner, Emmanuelle Seigner's kid sister). This is when Harry (Sergi López) shows up, bimbo (Sophie Guillemin) in tow. A friend from school, Harry believes Michel is destined to be a writer and tries to help him get back in touch with his muse. Trouble is we never learn why. As a result, the movie is stuck in the middle between the commonplace and the absurd. Director Dominik Moll's most recent feature, "Lemming", takes things a lot further in the direction of the surreal, and to advantage too. "Harry" picks up speed in its final half-hour though. Think "Blood Simple" meets "The Cable Guy". My favorite character: the flying monkey in the nightmare scene.