Film
My Best Friend's Girl
A 1983 French comedy about masculine friendship and desire, set in a ski resort. Pascal charms women effortlessly while his scruffy best friend Micky watches from the sidelines, until a beautiful seasonal visitor arrives. It's witty and fleet, built on the awkwardness of attraction and the peculiar cruelty friends inflict without meaning to. Perfect for anyone who loves character-driven French comedies with real romantic sting underneath the laughs.
If you liked this
Diner1982
Barry Levinson's ensemble debut about a group of men in Baltimore negotiating friendship, marriage, and adulthood. Warm, funny, and genuinely alive to how men actually talk when no one's watching. The banter feels earned.
But It's a film about nothing much happening, structured almost like a play. If you need plot momentum, you'll find it slack.
Atlantic City1980
Louis Malle's film about a small-time hustler and a casino waitress, set in the declining majesty of Atlantic City. It captures that precise mood where romance and desperation are inseparable, and charm is the only currency anyone has left.
But Very deliberately paced. Burt Lancaster's performance is magnificent but not flashy. Requires patience with mood over incident.
Possession1981
Andrzej Żuławski's deranged masterpiece about a marriage imploding in Berlin. Isabelle Huppert gives a performance of such raw intensity it's almost unbearable. A film that knows desire and betrayal are the same thing sometimes.
But Deeply unsettling, narratively chaotic, and sexually explicit in ways that feel dangerous rather than titillating. Not a comfortable watch.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from My Best Friend's Girl
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Cléo from 5 to 71962
Both are French films about desire and substitution set in small communities. But this one inverts the gaze—the woman is the subject, everyone else peripheral. A companion piece that reveals what Micky and Pascal are both missing by making them the watchers instead.
Agnès Varda's film takes ninety minutes in a woman's life as she waits for test results. It's weightless and real at once—a study in how we perform ourselves and what we become when the mask drops. The same urban romance and the same refusal to let men be the center of women's stories.
But No plot, no resolution. Varda is interested in surfaces and what they hide. Some find it meditative; others find it frustrating.
More like this (8)
Il Sorpasso1962
Dino Risi's film about two working-class men drifting through Rome, chasing women and pleasure with no real plan. It has the same warmth toward male friendship and the same clear-eyed view of how easily desire becomes loneliness.
But Italian neorealism influenced—slower than modern comedy, more observational. The ending doesn't resolve anything neatly.
Two Days, One Night2014
The Dardenne brothers' film about a woman trying to keep her job, going door-to-door to ask her colleagues for help. It's about vulnerability, class, and how our best friends are sometimes people who barely know us. Stunning Marion Cotillard.
But Repetitive by design—the same conversation happens many times. Emotionally exhausting rather than cathartic.
The Apartment1960
Billy Wilder's masterpiece about a man lending his apartment to his boss for affairs, desperate for advancement. It's fundamentally about how we compromise ourselves for people we think matter, and the friendship that saves us anyway.
But At over two hours and deeply felt about real loneliness, it's not as breezy as its reputation suggests.
My Night at Maud's1969
Éric Rohmer's exquisite film about a man torn between philosophy and desire, stuck in a single night with an ex-lover. Talk is the action here. It's about how we justify ourselves and how fragile conviction is when attraction arrives.
But Almost entirely dialogue. If you're not interested in how people rationalize their choices, there's nothing here for you.
L'Avventura1960
Michelangelo Antonioni's film about a woman who disappears and the man and woman left behind who become lovers instead. Utterly detached and modern about how we replace people, how friendship is negotiable, how beauty matters more than integrity.
But Famously slow, famously alienating. The famous hiss from the Cannes premiere wasn't entirely wrong. Requires genuine openness to coldness.
Going Places1974
Bertrand Blier's provocative film about two drifters and the woman they pick up, touring France in a state of sexual and philosophical anarchism. It's messy and transgressive and alive to the actual chaos of desire and friendship.
But Offensive by design—sexual violence, casual cruelty, a moral void. The charm is real but the darkness is darker than most people want.
Yi Yi2000
Both are warm comedies about how we negotiate intimacy and desire, but Yang pulls back to show the whole apparatus—the wives, the children, the life happening while the men are playing games. It's what the world looks like when you stop watching Micky and Pascal.
Edward Yang's Taiwanese epic about a middle-class family over the course of a year. It's about friendship, marriage, ambition, and how we fail people we love not from malice but from the sheer difficulty of being alive. Wide, generous, achingly smart.
But Three hours. Multiple storylines. Elliptical rather than propulsive. It's a novel in film form. Requires real surrender to a different rhythm.
Stalker1979
Both are fundamentally about male friendship and what men want from each other. But where your film is a comedy about surface charm, this is a metaphysical inquiry into whether any of it means anything. Same emotional core, opposite temperature.
Andrei Tarkovsky's metaphysical odyssey follows a guide taking two men into a mysterious zone. It's about desire and what we actually want when we get there. Hypnotic, deeply strange, about how friendship and shared purpose can contain entire worlds.
But Long, slow, philosophical. No answers. The pacing is meditative to the point of requiring a different mode of attention than conventional cinema. Not entertainment.
People
Cast
ColucheMicky
Isabelle HuppertViviane
Thierry LhermittePascal
François PerrotLe docteur
Daniel ColasLe dragueur- Frédérique MichotLa fille à la discothèque
Farid ChopelLe loubard
Directing
- Bertrand BlierDirector
Writing
- Bertrand BlierWriter
- Gérard BrachWriter
Production
- Pierre GrunsteinExecutive Producer
- Alain SardeProducer
- Claude BerriProducer