A wealthy young banker, bored with his lifestyle, visits a café in the Latin Quarter of Paris to mingle with the students from the Sorbonne. He meets a girl and pretends to be a struggling artist so that he can move into a room in the same boarding house.
"Quartier Latin" is a drab romantic comedy, poorly written, lazily directed and badly acted by almost all involved. Bernard Lancret is a particularly charmless romantic lead. Even Jean Tissier, a prolific and generally reliable character actor, is at a loss here (though he appears to be enjoying himself in the scene in which he massages Lancret's naked back). I might have found something more positive to say about this film if it had actually been shot on location in the Latin Quarter instead of on obvious studio sets which capture nothing of the flavour of that district, nor of student life.
A forgotten French film of the late 1930s which reminds us that not everything that came out of that Golden Age was a masterpiece.
"Quartier Latin" is a drab romantic comedy, poorly written, lazily directed and badly acted by almost all involved. Bernard Lancret is a particularly charmless romantic lead. Even Jean Tissier, a prolific and generally reliable character actor, is at a loss here (though he appears to be enjoying himself in the scene in which he massages Lancret's naked back). I might have found something more positive to say about this film if it had actually been shot on location in the Latin Quarter instead of on obvious studio sets which capture nothing of the flavour of that district, nor of student life.
A forgotten French film of the late 1930s which reminds us that not everything that came out of that Golden Age was a masterpiece.