The First Thing You See - Grégoire Delacourt

Grégoire Delacourt previously worked in the world of publicity, working on a number of notable advertising campaigns for companies in France, including Apple. He should know a bit then about the importance of appearances, which is the subject of his most recent book to be published in English, The First Thing You See ('La première chose qu'on regarde'). An alternative title for the book could be "What's Right in Front of your Eyes". That's the sentiment behind the story, a simple philosophical look at learning to not get caught up in appearances and ideals, but in accepting what you have, and finding happiness and beauty in it. It's a noble sentiment, but unfortunately it doesn't have anything much to say about it other than the obvious and simplistic observations.

The First Thing You See does however have an interesting spin on how it gets it message across. Arthur Drefuss is 20 and looks a bit like Ryan Gosling ("only better looking"). He's a car mechanic in a small French provincial village. As unlikely as it seems, he's surprised one evening by a knock at the door, only to find Scarlett Johansson standing there ("the most beautiful woman in the world"). Tired of all the fuss at a French film festival, she's taken off alone and arrived at Arthur's house in the middle of nowhere. She asks if she can stay over. Well, what would you do? The spellbound Arthur however eventually comes to look past the incredible boobs and lovely but superficial appearances and accept the real person behind for who she is. He does get all the surface attractions as well though, which is nice...

It's funny to imagine those actors playing these parts in a film adaptation, and it's a good visual hook, but the Scarlett Johansson obsession does get rather irritating after a while. It's a love story of course, but one that is unfortunately nauseatingly sentimental, with some long drawn out sexual tension building up to an inevitably pseudo-poetic consummation of their love. As far as what all this tells us about life and people in general, it's all a bit wishy-washy. Observations like "Why is happiness so sad?" (is it really?) is not some clever working with oxymoron or to offer anything insightful about life, but as its answer " ...Perhaps because it never lasts" suggests, it's manufactured to lead towards a rather obvious and manipulative ending.

It's not exactly Milan Kundera, although that is the kind of style affected here; a kind of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being Scarlett Johansson'. The writing is not particularly engaging however, it's littered with pop-culture references, a large amount of which are French, and has pretensions to be deep and meaningful. Anyone really interested in seeing how the true allure and attraction of Scarlett Johansson can be exploited more meaningfully will find much more to think about in Jonathan Glazer's imaginative film 'Under The Skin'.