Although living a comfortable life in Salon-de-Provence, a charming town in the South of France, Julie has been feeling depressed for a while. To please her, Philippe Abrams, a post office administrator, her husband, tries to obtain a transfer to a seaside town, on the French Riviera, at any cost. The trouble is that he is caught red-handed while trying to scam an inspector. Philippe is immediately banished to the distant unheard of town of Bergues, in the Far North of France...
[Dany] Boon tinkers with the formula just enough to make his story fresh and the sentiment at its heart not too sweet, though compounded contrivances in the last 30 minutes of the picture threaten to unravel its peculiar magic.
– Greg Quill,
Toronto Star,
23 Jan 2009
fresh:
There's nothing revolutionary or artistically groundbreaking here, but there's something reassuring in the fact that this is what the French have anointed as their biggest hit. Vive la (low-key) difference.