Romain Duris plays a professional seducer employed to break up couples in “L’Arnacoeur”. A comedy in which the actor has long hesitated to embark.
The Heartbreaker : the time of their lives
Alex Lippi (Romain Duris) does an atypical job. Associated with his sister Mélanie (Julie Ferrier) and his brother-in-law Marc (François Damiens), this charming young man is a professional relationship breaker. After having succeeded in many missions, he must take up a major challenge.
His company agrees to offer his services to Van Der Beck (Jacques Frantz), a businessman who would like his daughter Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) to separate from her wealthy British fiancé Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). To approach the future bride only ten days before the ceremonyAlex will have to redouble his inventiveness.
Passing himself off as his new bodyguard, he keeps running after Juliette, who is particularly suspicious. Despite everything, he manages to create a bond with her, notably by making her believe that he too is a big fan of George Michael and dirty dancing.
An ultra-paced comedy that owes as much to the chemistry between Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis as to that between Julie Ferrier and François Damiens, The Heartbreaker brings together nearly 3.8 million spectators in dark rooms in 2010.
A scenario long refused by Romain Duris
For Romain Duris, the film owes its success to “its locked script”, as he explains during an interview for The Parisian directed in 2013. The actor specifies that he hesitated for a long time before accepting the role of Alex, because the first versions of the script did not please him enough :
This is the scenario that I refused the longest! It took me two months to say yes. With each version, I was not satisfied!
Dreaming of a “naturally glamorous” actor, Pascal Chaumeil first thought of Jean Dujardin to play the main character, before setting his sights on Romain Duris. In the press kit, the director assures that “few actors of his generation have his charisma” and adds:
The films of Cédric Klapisch in which he played also prove that Romain is made for comedy.
The Heartbreaker also proves it, just like A jobPascal Chaumeil’s final feature film, released a year after his death in 2015, in which Romain Duris once again plays the main role.
