French Cinema: Apres Vous by Pierre Salvadori (2003)

This was a romantic comedy about a man who works in a Paris Brasserie and is constantly trying to do too much, seemingly unable to leave well enough alone. Antoine saves a man (Louis) from hanging himself while rushing across a park after dark (also with the gates locked so to take this short cut he has to climb over the gate) to a dinner date with his girlfriend.  Not only is Antoine thus  late for his date and his girlfriend is furious, he recruits her to help him rehabilitate this suicidal man, who has been driven to despair by the fact that his girlfiend broke up with him.

  Not only is Louis despairing but he has lost his job. It quickly develops that saving Louis is a full time job for Antoine, in addition to the one he has already at the Brasserie. He loses his own girlfriend in the process.  It doesn't help matters either that Louis is a complete idiot and basket case who apparently has no aptitude for  the sommelier job that Antoine gets for him at his own place of work.  He also tries mightily to patch things up between Louis and his ex girlfriend, who works in a flower shop.  Through various forms of subterfuge and against apparently very long odds, he succeeds, only to fall in love with the girl himself.   And of course if one is obsessed with a woman it tends to make you do crazy things.

Anyway it is a very complicated story, I'll leave the story there in case you want to see the film yourself.   I am reminded of Roger Ebert's description of an "idiot plot:" as one where the problem would resolve itself very quickly if everyone in the story were not an idiot.  Maybe that characterization is harsh, but this story does kind of travel the well worn narrative path of the fact that when it comes to love, everyone's kind of impaired.  It's an entertaining comedy, but that's about it.