Both sending themselves up in contrasting ways, the stars’ perceptive, vanity-free performances lend some weight and feeling to what is otherwise a frothy exercise — as is to be expected from Fitoussi, a specialist in female-driven French divertissements, including the uncharacteristically chipper Huppert vehicle “Copacabana” and the recent Laure Calamy hit “Two Tickets to Greece.” Given its starry, easy-breezy charms and accessibly inside-baseball humor, “All About Corinne” should have little trouble securing global arthouse distribution following a festival run that began as Locarno’s closing night selection, continuing through gala slots in Toronto and Busan; audiences au fait with “Call Your Agent!” and its good-humored brand of industry satire will feel right at home.
Nothing comes of it, of course, until months later, when Corinne sees the news that Kiberlain is taking to the Paris stage in a production of the very same play, and bitterly confronts her outside the theater. Out of resentment and shamefaced guilt, a highly conditional friendship is forged, as each actress uses the other to very different ends: In Kiberlain, Corinne sees her long-awaited connection to the top; through Corinne, Kiberlain believes she can keep it real. Fitoussi’s writing is fizzy and lightly bitchy throughout, but it’s the stars, playing freely with their respective screen personae, who make it genuinely funny. In a more obvious iteration of this story, their roles might be swapped: There’s as much inherent comedy in Huppert playing a spiraling, faintly tragic rube as in Kiberlain, best known for her neurotic comic work, revealing the brittle hauteur of her “real” self.
Other good sports turning up as themselves, to wickedly unflattering effect, include Emmanuelle Bercot, tetchily directing a big-budget period drama that could turn things around for Corinne, and Diane Kruger — hilariously glamazonian as she competes with Kiberlain for maximum miscasting in a new Dardenne Brothers film about a tiler in Liège. If that raises a chuckle from you, as it certainly did from this critic, then consider yourself squarely in the film’s target audience. You can cut precisely without cutting too deep: More sweet than scathing, “All About Corinne” loves its stars too much to really draw blood. We love them too, so that’s just fine.
