by Hudson Moura
French Lover frames the film set as a fairy-tale enclave—à la Notting Hill—where cinema becomes both refuge and ruse. Its protagonist, Abel Camara (Omar Sy), is a charismatic but self-absorbed French star whose public image—and César ambitions—often eclipse his private ethics. Wounded by ego—unwilling to appear dumped and alone after his girlfriend begins seeing his nemesis—he concocts a self-protective ruse: recruit an unassuming woman to “play” his partner. The film’s central tension is thus ethical rather than logistical—will she discover she is the object of a egocentric performance rather than the subject of a romance?—and that hinge gives the narrative its most interesting (if underexplored) charge.
Sy’s turn marks his first straightforward romantic-comedy lead, and he carries the premise with ease: affable screen presence, deft timing, effortless charm. Yet the script too often lets charm substitute for character: Abel’s careerist tunnel vision drives the plot but flattens his arc, and the deception that underwrites the courtship remains soft-pedaled rather than meaningfully interrogated. Marion (Sara Girardeau) is introduced as “awkward” and “offbeat,” but the film treats her difference as a device—an obstacle to be sanded down—rather than as a perspective that might reframe Abel’s world.
Formally, Nina Rives opts for lightness: bright pacing, clean setups, frictionless transitions. The film is consistently agreeable and eminently watchable—ideal for streaming—but its comic architecture is closer to a Hallmark-style TV romance than to the layered theatrical rom-coms of Nora Ephron or Richard Curtis. What’s missing is an ensemble with real comic torque and a secondary world dense enough to give the central relationship texture and counterpoint. Side characters orbit the leads without acquiring agency or the kind of running gags that build cumulative payoffs; as a result, scenes resolve neatly rather than crescendoing.
Still, the film understands the pleasures of wish-fulfillment: recognizable milieus, aspirational spaces, a star who can still make a meet-cute feel like cinema. When French Lover leans into the meta-game—stardom as paranoia and performance—it briefly hints at a sharper satire of the industry’s transactional intimacies. But it retreats to comfort almost as soon as it grazes critique, choosing amiability over bite. 
3/5