Mr Blake at Your Service review – John Malkovich does worst French accent ever in baffling comedy misfire

Gilles Legardinie’s broad dramedy set in a chateau, co-starring Fanny Ardant and Émilie Dequenne, is an ordeal to watch. Sacré bleu! This truly bizarre film has a substantial reserve of goodwill to draw on: among its blue-chip cast are John Malkovich and Fanny Ardant, and it’s also the final film of the Belgian star Émilie Dequenne, famous for winning the best actress award at Cannes for her nonprofessional debut in Rosetta in 1999, who sadly died of cancer in March at the age of 43. It is a broad and baffling dramedy, directed by the bestselling French author Gilles Legardinier, and adapted from his 2012 novel Complètement Cramé! (Completely Burnt Out!).Malkovich plays a wealthy grieving widower called Andrew Blake, supposedly from England, who, to ease his broken heart, takes a job as a butler in a French chateau whose owner (Ardant) has fallen on hard times. It is a sentimental journey for him, as many years ago he first met his French wife, Diane, in the chateau’s sumptuous grounds. Among the below-stairs gallery of wacky characters is grumpy but golden-hearted housekeeper Odile (played by Dequenne). Continue reading...

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