French Romance ‘Un Plus Une’ Fights for Awards Attention, Enchants Quentin Tarantino

Star Elsa Zylberstein says Claude Lelouch’s gem already has a big fan in the “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker — now, it just needs to reach voters

When you make a gentle, understated love story set halfway around the world, you don’t expect to find a huge fan in the man responsible for the brutal likes of “Pulp Fiction,” “Django Unchained” and “Inglourious Basterds.”

After the film screened in April at the COLCOA Film Festival in Los Angeles, star Elsa Zylberstein told TheWrap, it picked up a huge fan in Quentin Tarantino.

“It’s funny, light on its feet and never maudlin,” we wrote at the time, but it also packs a powerful emotional punch as the two lead characters — a successful film composer with a steady girlfriend, and the wife of a French diplomat — try to flirt their way around an obvious attraction as they travel together to a spiritual healer of sorts in India …

Dujardin’s rakish charm is perfect, while the lesser-known Zylberstein is his equal in every regard, a smart woman who knows she should avoid this guy but isn’t interested in denying the attraction between them.

The drawback, for those who want to see what Tarantino and many others have responded to, is that the Oscar run is a one-week stint at an Edwards multiplex in West Covina, far off the beaten track of local arthouse cinema.

[...] a longer release in a nearer theater remains a possibility — which would be fitting, because Zylberstein said the project got its start on a plane to Los Angeles in 2013.

Dujardin was coming from Paris to present an award at the Oscars the year after he won Best Actor for “The Artist,” while Zylberstein, who has been in dozens of French films over the last three decades, winning a Cesar for “I’ve Loved You So Long,” was flying in to meet with her American agent.

[...] he said, ‘Come Elsa, have a seat!’ We spoke for five hours, we had dinner, we drank, we dreamt about films, and suddenly we said, ‘What about doing a film together?'

In “Un Plus Une,” the chemistry between Dujardin and Zylberstein is effortless (“we were made to play together,” she said), and the film makes full use of the vibrant if chaotic Indian locations.

“This director is a master,” said Zylberstein, who has since done another film, an ensemble piece, with Lelouch.

[...] the vibrant actress, whose English is excellent and spirited (unlike her more tentative co-star Dujardin), is also dying to attract the notice of American directors — and not just the one who’s already a huge fan of her film.