A drive through the Parisian countryside with Catherine Deneuve at the wheel of director and cowriter Emmanuelle Bercot’s formless flivver. One reel of backstory, another squandered in search of a pack of smokes, and it’s time to gift La Deneuve with a solid audition reel for the American sequel to The Guilt Trip, should Babs decline the role. Le Grande Beauté stars as a struggling restaurateur who abruptly decides to pull up stakes and embark on a baggy, shaggy dog roadtrip that yields an outturn of, in no particular order: cigarettes, sex, a cataclysmic return to lost glamour, romance, three generations of discontented dames, and more cigarettes. Deneuve confronts the cliches and character incongruities head on and at a pace that clocks in somewhere between walk-through and stumble. Any bets on how long it takes Jane Fonda to option the rights to an American remake? (2013) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.