It all started when Balthazar was upgraded to sit beside Alice when the huge man who occupied the aisle seat of an inland flight refused to budge to allow Balthazar to get into his allotted seat. Alice was then working on her computer on the plane which sustained a severe case of air turbulence and in the agony of the moment, instinctively held his hands, something for which she profusely apologized when she realized it but Balthazar thought it a wonderful experience. The young kid had developed a crush for her. Nothing would have happened had Alice not forgotten her finger on the plane in her hurry to get off that bumpy flight. Balthazar found it on her seat and was running after her taxi to give it back to her but it was too late, so presumably after seeing what was in the finger, discovered where she worked and gave her a telephone to ask her to call him. She never did. However, when Alice switched on her portable computer and discovered she had lost the finger, she decided to give Balthazar a call to find out if somehow he might have found it. To her delight he told him he had it with him. So she jumped on a taxi and got to where he was, a typical college kid hang out joint with loud music and incessantly whirling crowds. She found him but he told her that it was not on his person but at home ! She immediately accompanied him home where after much difficulties he retrieved it amongst his pile of rubbish under his enormous desk amidst books and various kinds of college kid stuffs. Before getting to his house on his run down motor bike, she had to wear a helmet and the bands were too tight and he had to help her do it properly and whilst doing so, with their heads very close together as if they were kissing from a certain angle, one of Balthazar female friends took snapshot of it with her I-phone and when he got back to her office the next morning everyone seemed to be looking at her in a queer way: the girl had the photo published on tweeters with words referring to the sex act in the most explicit language! She had a word with her colleague who challenged her that she would never really understand that world and that she could never change. Partly to spite him and to prove how able she was, she took up the challenge and called the boy and a crazy but fake relation developed, something which she profited by writing a very popular article about life of current teenagers.
But once they got started, the boy became quite serious with her and suggested that maybe they could consider living together but being a sensible single parent with a writing career and an eight year old girl to look after, she patronized him by remarking that he did not know what he was talking about. The boy walked away. That was the end until her boss wanted a new photo on the magazine cover and she liked the look of Balthazar in a photo taken when one of the models slipped in a fashion show to which Alice brought Balthazar and Balthazar rushed on to the cat walk to help her up. She was given the assignment of asking him to pose for the magazine cover. For the sake of her career, she did so. Balthazar agreed but came late and posed as he was directed by the photographers until he stormed out because he disliked the way the female photographer spoke to him in very abusive language. Alice started out trying to use him to boost her ego and then for the sake of the advancement of her professional career but when the film ends, it appears that age did not make any difference when one party of a relationship showed genuine affection for the other and when she found some genuine attraction in the qualities of brutal honesty and innocence in that boy, something entirely missing in the cynical world of publication of trendy commercial fashion magazines. Will it develop any further? It's anybody's guess.
It's a well-made film. In all comedies, timing is key. The French really know from what angle to shoot and where and at what exact point in time. They seem to have the uncanny knack of making otherwise completely incredible scenario become perfectly inevitable from the logic of the chance in the specific context: neither too early or too late, neither too much nor too little. It's an art. And the director and cinematographer in this film Laurent Tanguy seems to have mastered that art to a T. A great part of the credit must go of course to the acting of the two protagonists Efira and Ninev. I like the part when she asked her daughter what she was listening on her headphone and tried to memorize every title of the groups she was then listening to just before going to see Balthazar as part of her desire for proving her colleagues wrong in her inability to change and another part of the film about how Alice's elder sister was making remarks on how to give Alice herself a "second chance" in every available occasion. The music by Guillaume Roussel is great and matches very well the moods of the scene In short a most entertaining film.
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