Critics reviews

After the narrative precision required for “Tell No One,” Canet might have welcomed a looser approach. But two and a half hours is an absurdly bloated running time for such a trifle. It’s not a trip to remember.

Little White Lies simply tries too hard. What works are its offhand moments and gentle insights, not its comic shtick and overwrought grief. Rather than crafting a French film that will appeal to Americans, Canet has made one that's altogether too Hollywood to stand out in stateside cinemas.

Unfortunately, Canet’s 2010 film Little White Lies feels like Tell No One minus that inciting incident, and therefore minus the plot. It once again claps Cluzet into a country-home vacation amid old friends with conflicting agendas, but while the self-pity gets chokingly thick, the cast of privileged, navel-gazing characters have no outside antagonist, and no one to blame for their trials but themselves.

With the exception of Marie “Little White Lies” focuses mostly on the men: whiny, strutting little boys whose exasperated, tight-lipped wives put up with their bad behavior and sometimes have to act like mommies. Although these friends have some fun horsing around in the water, their conflicts and rivalries make for a tense, joyless holiday that is anything but relaxing.

But in broad terms, writer-director Guillaume Canet doesn’t pepper his script with enough backstory for us to discern why, precisely, his characters grope at one another so myopically; they’re instead robotically upholding the fictional tradition of well-bred, bourgeois professionals whose finery induces emotional indigestion.

[B]ecause his cast of characters is composed of selfish, boring people doing selfish, boring things, Little White Lies is less a portrait of the poignance and beauty of lasting, mostly platonic relationships than a lesson in how to be a shitty friend.

The truths don't always ring true, the characters become increasingly dislikable the more we come to know them, the duration is excessive, and there's a tearful, cringe-making funeral to the strains of Nina Simone's version of "My Way".

Guillaume Canet, who had a crossover hit with Tell No One, has written and directed a humane comedy-drama that's reminiscent of vintage Woody Allen, a more glamorous Mike Leigh or, most obviously, The Big Chill.

Little White Lies is hugely enjoyable with a great balance of humour and drama, a pitch-perfect cast and some beautiful direction. While it may not win any awards for originality, and the running time may inhibit viewer enjoyment, it is, nonetheless, a pleasurable and, at times, compelling experience.

Little White Lies unspools as glossy, high-grade tosh, a sun-dappled Big Chill, without the rigour or insight required to make you care about these people and wonder which bed they will eventually wind up in.

It’s slightly glib, very glossy and over-extended at 154 minutes. But there’s an overriding sense that Canet knows this territory, and gets the best out of an excellent cast.

It's overlong, but with its gorgeous cast, irreverent humour and beautifully drawn characters, this smart comedy-drama is the kind of movie Couples Retreat and Grown Ups should have been.