365 Days. 365 Films.

Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu star in Green Card, written and directed by Peter Weir about a French man who marries an American woman in order to get a green card. Bronte married Georges for her perfect apartment including a beautiful greenhouse where she can bury herself in her gardening, but when immigration officers come to visit them, Georges has to move in to her dream apartment to pretend that they are a legitimately married couple in love. As with all romantic comedies, all hell breaks loose and they, of course, hate each other at the start, but their love blossoms with them having to constantly keep each other’s company and pretending to be a couple.

The film is funny in places and sweet in others and is generally a charming film to watch, if not only for Depardieu’s endearing French accent. If anyone has seen Spaced (a TV show starring Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes and Nick Frost) then this film will probably remind you of that – in the first episode of the first series they make a loving homage to this film in pretending to be a couple, and even though this film came first, I know Spaced too well to ignore the similarities. This film is pretty much an extension of that theme in the first episode of Spaced..

The acting is what you would expect, but a little better than I expected from Andie MacDowell as I never had huge respect for her as an actress, however watching this has turned that around for me. Depardieu is brilliantly powerful and emotional throughout and the chemistry between the two of them makes the film a tremendously enjoyable love story all together.