02/27/10 - Love in the Afternoon

Love in the Afternoon (1957, 130 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050658/

With my promise of watching a lot of Audrey Hepburn films in February, I look back and see I watched ... one. So, I decide to watch this to at least get two in this month. In the past, I'd liked Hepburn herself in the films, but the films themselves were just hit or miss.

This film features Gary Cooper in the male lead as Frank Flannagan, an extremely wealthy playboy. Audrey Hepburn stars as Ariane Chavasse, the daughter of the detective Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier), who falls in love with Flannagan. Also, featuring in a smaller role is John McGiver as Monsieur X, a man who hires the detective.

Apparently, the main complaint with this film was the age disparity between Cooper and Hepburn. Personally, though, I didn't mind this all that much and that was mainly because I felt Cooper played his role pretty well. I compared it to Funny Face where Fred Astaire plays an older lover of Hepburn and it just seemed overall just okay. The relationship here was a lot better. Both characters played up the mixed feelings portion of the love story pretty well and were believable. An added bonus (for me) was Hepburn at probably her most beautiful.

The downside to this film was that it was just really really boring. From director Billy Wilder, I've also seen Stalag 17 and Sabrina (another Hepburn flick). Both of these stories were timeless in my opinion and this was a huge contributing factor to why I gave them pretty good marks. Here, though, there's what seems like an eternity of a runtime with not much actually happening. Also, the story itself just became dated and didn't really translate well to 2010. It's hard to fault the film for this, but I can say how boring a huge portion of the film was.

Even with this boredom, the end product featured many fun moments. Notably, the performance of McGiver was quirky and enjoyable. Hepburn herself was cute and a provider of a different sort of comedy. The laughs weren't bountiful, but there were more than I was expecting.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. The fun moments and the overall quality acting from everyone here essentially balances out the boring plot and long lulls in the middle. It's not worth another watch except possibly to see Hepburn looking beautiful again. So, as a last remark it seems my streak of hit or miss with Hepburn films continues along.