Overview
I Do or Rent a Wife (international working title), is a 2006 French romantic comedy film directed by Éric Lartigau, based on an original idea by Alain Chabat. The film stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat and Bernadette Lafont. It is Chabat and Gainsbourg's third collaboration, after Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants (2004) and The Science of Sleep (2006). This film was officially remade into an Indian Telugu language film Manmadhudu 2 released in August 2019.
Plot summary
Luis Campos (Alain Chabat), 43, happily single, mollycoddled by his family (mother and 5 sisters, who by design established by his late father Hercule form a kind of family council known as the G7), has a successful career as a perfumer and an easy life. Tired of taking care of him, the G7 decide he should get married within a year. The problem is Luis does not want any kind of serious relationship since they ruined his first true love. After turning down all the girls introduced to him, he gets an idea: "rent" his best friend's sister, Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg), turn her into the perfect bride-to-be, and make her not show up on their wedding day. That way, Luis thinks his family will leave him alone. Unfortunately for him, his family likes Emma and blames him when she apparently jilts him at the altar. He then comes up with an alternate plan to have Emma act horribly towards his family so they will not like her anymore. The two begin to fall in love so Luis finally stands up to his family, confesses his schemes and finally settles down with Emma.
Cast
Alain Chabat - Luis Costa
Charlotte Gainsbourg - Emma
Bernadette Lafont - Geneviève Costa
Wladimir Yordanoff - Francis Bertoff
Grégoire Oestermann - Pierre-Yves
Véronique Barrault - Catherine
Marie-Armelle Deguy - Axelle
Aïssa Maïga - Kirsten Hansen
Katia Lewkowicz - Carole
Louise Monot - Maxine
Anne Marivin - Sales Associate
Éric Lartigau - A passerby
Production
Alain Chabat originally came up with the idea for the film and planned to produce the film and write the script. Director Éric Lartigau asked him to play the role of Luis so he rewrote the character as an older man. Over a five-year period Chabat's original script went through seven different rewrites by four other scriptwriters. Chabat decided to include a scene where the character of Emma watches an action film. After comparing different Chinese kung fu films, he settled on a 100-second fight sequence from the Indian film Muthu (1995).
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).