Deux

Made in 1989, "Deux" ("Two") is perhaps a lesser known movie that stars my favorite French actor Gérard Depardieu, but this doesn't mean it is not a good movie. In fact, I find it quite surprising that the film is not more known in the international circle. Directed by Claude Zidi, "Deux" is a love story that starts with a "coup de foudre" in which Gérard Depardieu, a contemporary music composer turned concert organizer, meets and falls head over heels for a real estate agent played by the beautiful Maruschka Detmers during his hunt for a house in Montmartre, Paris.

The attraction is so strong between the two that whenever they go to view the property, they end up in bed. One day Depardieu proposes marriage, and it is after this surprising news that the two start to wonder about what it means to get married. Depardieu has been a bachelor and playboy all his life, so he doesn't want to be tied down by the promise of fidelity. His fiancée, having lived an indepedent life while being protected by her parents at the same time, doesn't seem to want to give the whole of herself either. They have a ridiculous discussion of the marital contract before their wedding, and even decide not to have sex before their big day. But none of these tricks make things better.

It is not until after an explosion and a terrible fire in a restaurant where they discuss their separation, that things start to make an 180-degree turn.

Highly charged with romantic tension, humor and questions of marriage and commitment, this movie is anything but the average Hollywood-style fairytale flick. But at the end of the movie, you would feel that it is a fairytale of real love, no less.