French television director Pascal Chaumeil offers up his first feature length film, Heartbreaker, a film distributed by Universal Pictures and what looked like had potential to be a smart romantic comedy. Unfortunately, it was not as good as I was hoping and quickly turned into a predictable and lazy narrative structure.

The film follows Alex Lippi (played by Romain Duris), a man whose profession is to break up couples with the assistance of his sister and her husband. When they are hired by a rich businessman to break up the relationship between his daughter, Juliette Van Der Becq (played by Vanessa Paradis), and her British millionaire fiancée in a week, they immediately take on the job when they realise that they need over fifty thousand Euros to pay the debt of their company. However, when Alex poses as Juliette’s bodyguard, he soon starts to fall in love with her.

While the premise did get me interested in this film, the screenplay seems unsure of how much to differentiate itself and sadly decides to be like any other romantic comedy, particularly in the second half of the film. It also does not help that the characteristics of Alex and Juliette seem to change half-way through the story; Juliette is very independent and strong minded, with no reason to suddenly fall for Alex, which is exactly what she does.

However, the performances from the key cast members were surprisingly good. Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis were both very natural which made them engaging and watchable, in spite of the fact that their characters were quite annoying during the course of the film.

Previously seen in Micmacs, Julie Ferrier plays Alex’s sister and she manages to be as likable to watch on-screen as in her performance in the Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, while the actor who played the husband to Alex’s sister was quite funny, despite the tendancy to lapse into slapstick.

Pascal Chaumeli’s directorial debut into feature length films was one that I had mixed feelings on as he did a decent enough job to make it visually pleasant, but did not add anything new to the genre that The Heartbreaker is representing.

Having a screenplay riddled with repetitive jokes and one too many references to Dirty Dancing, Chaumeil seems to avoid subverting the form, and only cared if Heartbreaker would appeal to audiences familiar with the romantic genre’s typical structure rather then trying to make something smart and stylish.

While it is not the best film I have seen, it has its merits in its likable cast members and an interesting-enough premise, but what could have easily been a smart, stylish and interesting romantic comedy turns into a  repetitive and unoriginal entry in a highly recognisable genre. A disappointment.