VODebut for Anne Giafferi's baby-centric French rom-com, LOVE AT FIRST CHILD

About as manufactured and manipulative as a rom-com can get -- and you know how ridiculous this genre often is -- LOVE AT FIRST CHILD (its French title is the much more mundane, named-after-its-leading-characters Ange & Gabrielle) turns out to be, once you say "OK: I'll play along," a reasonably clever, enjoyable and funny example of this perennially popular movie species. The big difference here has to do with what exists at the core of it all: a surprise pregnancy that involves two generations.

As adapted (from a play by Murielle Magellan) and directed by Anne Giafferi (shown at left), with collaboration from Anne Le Ny, the film begins with an interesting enough premise: The mother of a newly pregnant 17-year-old arrives at the office of the father of the young man who has inseminated her daughter and demands that the father of this father-to-be take his son in hand and make him accept his parental responsibility. Fair enough, if a bit unusual. The  mother is played by the always luminous actress Isabelle Carré (below), and her character is as determined and insistent as you might expect for a caring, concerned but maybe a little-over-the-top mother.

It is regarding the father department that the situation grows more difficult. Not only does the father-to-be want nothing to do with the upcoming birth, but there's a bit of a problem with the new father's father (Patrick Bruel. shown below, right, with Thomas Solivérès, who plays his no-nonsense son). Much of the film's fun and conflict derives from this character, so to say much more would spoil some of that fun.

As the film unfurls, some of that earlier manipulation dissipates, due to the smart and charming performances, and Ms Giafferi's fast pacing (the film lasts only 91 minutes). By the finale, all kinds of romantic connections have been made, and there are a number of adorable babies on view.

So, for fans of this sort of thing, Love at First Child should prove a tolerable, and sometimes even better-than-that experience. (That's Alice de Lencquesaing, above, who plays the expectant young mother with the expected youthful energy and blithe disregard).

From Under the Milky Way, the movie hits VOD nationwide this coming Tuesday, July 11, on all major platforms including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Microsoft, Vudu, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Vimeo, and various other cable operators. 

A sort-of re-release for the Flesher/Mack/ Ordynans indie rom-com, BURNING ANNIE

Would that the movie -- BURNING ANNIE -- were half as fraught and fascinating as its own history, which you can read all about here in an article that appeared recently in Moviemaker magazine. The film itself is not awful by any means. It has quite a few chuckles and, depending on your sense of humor, some outright guffaws. But it is mostly "of its time," and that time, unfortunately, has pretty much passed. Begun in 1999 but only semi-finished in 2004, it finally made its theatrical debut at a single Manhattan theaters in 2007.

One month after theatrical release, its DVD hits the street, and since then, the film has been in limbo. The brain child of writers Randy Mack and Zack Ordynans (shown above, with Mack on the left) and directed by Van Flesher, Burning Annie offers a main character, Max (Gary Lundy, below), who is besotted with Woody Allen's Annie Hall. He watches this film constantly and appears to try to live and love by its "rules." This is particularly odd, since Max seems not to understand the film in the least.

The Allen character (in Annie Hall and in nearly every other of Woody's many movies) is intent on trying to fit into the the normal world and in the process get laid, while young Max does precisely the opposite. He rejects that world and pushes away literally everyone, especially all the women around him. (When he finally does get laid, the moviemakers conveniently leave out what led up to this momentous moment.)

The mostly non-stop dialog is often fun, though now -- some 15 or so years later -- it can also feel rather forced and too of-its-time, while the acting ranges from OK to good. Lundy seems like a somewhat cuter and sexier Jesse Eisenberg (who burst upon the scene during the years that Burning Annie was being made), but perhaps lacking the latter's extraordinary acting chops. (TrustMovies would not be surprised if some of the roles that might have gone to Lundy went to Eisenberg instead.)

The rest of the cast is perfectly adequate, but the Annie Hall thing hangs over the movie something fierce and finally weighs it down enough to make it difficult for this would-be rom-com soufflé to rise.

From Armak Productions and The Sundance Institue Creative Distribution Initiative, Burning Annie will get its worldwide HD re-release this coming Monday, May 15, on every major HD platform, including Vimeo On Demand, Netflix, iTunes, Vudu and Amazon. 

Streaming surprise: Jeremy Leven's international frolic (spoken in English), GIRL ON A BICYCLE

Some movies start out so silly, stretching an already slight premise far past the breaking point, that you doubt you'll be able to continue watching for long. Such is GIRL ON A BICYCLE, only the second film to be directed by Jeremy Levin. (Don Juan DeMarco was his first, and he also helped adapt one of my least favorite movies ever, The Notebook, from its original novel.) But then a particularly good scene helps perk things up, and you stick with it a bit longer. Then comes another good one, and another, and pretty soon you're hooked.

Mr. Leven, shown at left, has both written and directed this German/American co-production, and he has cast it so internationally that the quartet of leading players features an Italian, a German, a Britisher and a French woman. The setting is Paris (it's gorgeous, as usual), and many of the supporting players are French, as well. Interestingly, most of the dialog is spoken in English, which is truly now the international language, so audiences who hate readings subtitles will not have to worry. (The very varied accents on display, however, may give your ears a real workout, initially at least.)

Girl on a Bicycle may be the rom-com to end all rom-coms, so initially ridiculous does it seem. An Italian tour-bus driver and lecturer named Paolo (Vincenzo Amato, above), about to propose to the girl of his dreams, does so and is married. One day soon after he catches a glimpse of an attractive young girl on her bicycle, and -- whoosh! -- he's off the romantic races once again.

Initially we feel little sympathy for the guy, and Amato's over-energetic and mostly charm-free performance doesn't help a lot. Yet eventually, against all odds, the oddball goings-on keep pulling us back in.

Many of the other characters are pretty charming, especially Paolo's bride, Greta (the lovely Nora Tschirner, above, holding newspapers, in a scene with a recalcitrant passenger that may be the film's comic highlight).

Greta is an airline stewardess, for whom one of the pilots (Stéphane Debac, above, left) has an unending lech. Then there's Paolo's best friend, Derek (Paddy Considine, below), forever full of advice about women and love and such.

Finally, we have that titular girl on the bike, Cécile (played dizzily by the lovely Louise Monot, below), and her two delightfully needy children (shown in the penultimate photo), who've been waiting years, it seems, for their father to come home.

Cécile is a model, and one of the film's funnier scenes involves a bathtub shoot and a slippery bar of soap.

All these characters are finally like pieces in a Rube Goldberg contraption, which, when set off, will cause one problem after another before finally bringing the movie to a satisfying finish. Well, love is crazy, after all. Why shouldn't it mimic one of those Goldberg machines?

Fortunately, most of the actors are good enough and enjoyable enough to bring their characters to life so that we go along for the ride. And the ride does grow better and funnier as it moves ahead. By the finale, I suspect you'll have tossed all caution to the winds and whole-heartedly embraced this silliness. We certainly did. (And, yes, there's always that forever-beautiful city of Paris.)

Girl on a Bicycle can be streamed now via Netflix and elsewhere. You can also view it on DVD.

Streaming tip: Fans of Peter Facinelli and/or oddball rom-coms will want to watch LOOSIES

The hunky and talented actor Peter Facinelli, a Queens boy, has had quite a nice career: more than 50 film and TV appearances in less than 20 years. Yet the stardom, which many of us expected would be his, seems to have so far eluded him. Still, he manages to appear in lots of interesting films, the least interesting but most successful of which would have to the Twlight saga, in which he portrays Daddy Vampire. He also made some waves in movies like the delightful Can't Hardly Wait, the ill-fated (but still fun) Supernova, and the recent rom-com-cum-chase-movie, LOOSIES, which he wrote, co-produced and in which he plays the leading role.

As directed by Michael Corrente (shown at left: American Buffalo, Outside Providence), the movie plays fast and relatively well, while the screenplay -- though not always super-believable (are cops really this stupid?) -- works decently enough to engage us in both the love story and the action /chase aspects of the film.

Facinelli (on poster, above, and below) plays Bobby, a pickpocklet and petty thief who manages to sustain himself and his mom via his clever fingers and fast thinking/action. Under normal circumstances, we might find it difficult to root for a guy like this, so the movie provides Bobby with a backstory "out," which we learn a bit of, and then more of, as the film progesses.

Romance is provided by the lovely Jaime Alexander (below) as Lucy, a girl with whom our "hero" had a little fling, which now comes back to haunt and entice him all over again.

The bad guys (except they're not, really) are cops played by Michael Madsen, whose police badge Bobby has stolen and uses from time to time, and his boss William Forsythe, below, both of whom have some fun with their roles.

The real bad guy is the crook to whom Bobby is "indebted," played with his ususal relish by Vincent Gallo (below, right). There's a subplot about Bobby's mom (a nice job by Marianne Leone) and her new romance with a fellow played by the always amusing Joe Pantoliano, and this is worked nicely into the film's focus and climax.

That's about it. Loosies turns out to be a feel-good fluff piece that will easily pass an hour-and-a-half of your time -- particularly if you're already a Facinelli fan. If not, the movie might turn you into one.

You can stream Loosies now via Netflix and elsewhere. It's also available on DVD and Blu-ray (the latter under the title, Love Is Not a Crime).

How to become a writer the easy/hard way: Alain Gsponer's LILA LILA opens in New York

The adorable German actor Daniel Brühl (from Good Bye Lenin! to last year's Rush) has such a youthful countenance that even after more than a decade of film-making he barely seems to have aged. Even so, in what is his latest movie to open here in New York City, LILA LILA, he appears to be suddenly aging backwards. Never fear: this is because, though Lila Lila opens this Friday, it is already five years old, having been released in Germany back in 2009. This is not the only oddity about the movie. While watching it, I kept thinking of another film -- The Words -- released in 2012 that appears to have been "inspired" by its German counterpart. Both films deal with a young man who comes upon a manuscript -- that he then pretends to have written -- of what turns out to be, once published, a critically acclaimed and extremely popular novel.

While The Words treated this whole thing uber-seriously and thus became utterly silly, Lila Lila uses the idea for its rom-com potential and thus gives in to the silliness, allowing us to have some fun. Directed by Alain Gsponer, with a screenplay by Alex Buresch, adapted from the novel by Martin Suter, the movie is lightweight in the extreme, with characters doing things that often don't ring true to who they are. Or maybe who they want to be. But this does not prove a deal-breaker, as the glossy trappings and attractive leads -- Herr Brühl, playing a character named David Kern, pairs with the spunky, attractive young actress Hannah Herzsprung, below -- make the viewing pleasurable and nearly swift enough to keep us watching. (The running time of 107 minutes might have been shortened by about ten for maximum effect and to avoid needless repetition.)

Having a hero who claims credit for something he didn't actually do can be tricky, but Lila Lila finesses this by having Ms Herzsrpung's character, Marie, send the manuscript to the publisher unbeknownst to David, who then spends the remainder of the movie feeling guilty but trying to enjoy the perks that sudden fame has bestowed upon him.

Brühl (above) is by now a past master at playing sweet and naive, and he does so again here with proper relish and just the right amount of diffidence. (The actor is much more versatile than this, however, as his appearances in Rush and The Fifth Estate will attest.)

The movie is helped (for awhile, at least) by the introduction of a new character, Jacky (played by the funny Henry Hübchen, above and below, left). Who he is and what he wants add to the near-screwball comedy that the movie would like to -- and sometime nearly does -- achieve.

Also on tap is a publisher's assistant hoping to become David's agent (a very nice job by Kirsten Block, below, left). There's romance, a little comedy, and a look at how German publishing works (it's not that different from most Western countries). But mostly, the film will please fans of the ubiquitous Mr. Brühl.

Lila Lila -- the rare theatrical release from Corinth Releasing (the very interesting catalog of which you ought takea look at) -- opens this Friday, May 23, in New York City at the Quad Cinema.