The Anonymous Romantics

Angélique Delange (Isabelle Carré) is a gifted chacolatière. Her creations for Monsieur Mercier are legendary. For seven years, the extremely shy Angélique works in secret, quietly enjoying her fame. But when Mercier dies, she desperately needs a new job. Jean-René's (Benoît Poelvoorde) chocolate factory might be the right place for her to continue her talent and passion for chocolate. Too bad Jean-René is no less shy and always panics when he has to communicate with other people. And so there is a big misunderstanding right at the job interview and Angélique has to promote her new employer's chocolates in the field - the absolute horror for the young woman. But it's when Angélique and Jean-René discover their feelings for each other that things get really complicated.

The Anonymous Romantics is playful French entertainment cinema of the particularly tasty kind. Benoît Poelvoorde (Nothing to Declare) and Isabelle Carré (Back to the Sea) are a very likeable and endearing couple - despite, or perhaps because of, their emotional shortcomings. When, for example, Angélique faints with shyness immediately after her introduction to her support group for the highly sensitive, or Jean-René frantically tries to touch another person on the instructions of his psychiatrist, it's not only enormously funny, but also very touching in a way.

Director Jean-Pierre Améris doesn't even try to create a realistic world. The Anonymous Romantics is an uninhibitedly romantic tale that merely plays with set pieces of reality and incorporates them into the story with charming ease. The inability to communicate with one`s fellow man and the resulting isolation is truly not a product of Améris` imagination. But the director has so enchantingly turned this inherently very sad aspect of our social reality into a love story that the viewer is never in danger of leaving the cinema frustrated.

On the contrary, the endearing main characters, the beautiful story and the indulgent portrayal of the making of Angélique`s chocolate creations make this romantic comedy a real treat for all lovers of light French entertainment and playful cinema tales. Absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp