You can take the boy out of France but you can't take France . . . You know how it goes. In "Afterwards," French heartthrob Romain Duris ("The Beat that My Heart Skipped") plays workaholic Manhattan attorney Nathan, and though this should be a celebratory vehicle that marks his jump across the Atlantic to perform in a major-English language production, he and the role just don't gel. Duris looks altogether too French, too effortlessly skinny, too used to the 35-hour work week to pull off the high-powered lawyer ambience.
When Nathan says he hasn't slept in weeks (because of his tremendous workload, of course) and how his personal life has been destroyed, you just want to laugh and tell him to quit kidding around. Nathan has "Gallic" imprinted on his forehead, and the only thing that could cause him to lose his rest plus a personal relationship is a new, more demanding relationship. When he's sitting there in a tailored suit with an open laptop, the frame feels like something out of a "What's wrong with this picture?" quiz. As far as "Afterwards" is concerned, everything.
"Afterwards" is based on French best-seller "Et Apres . . . " by Guillaume Musso and directed by French filmmaker Gilles Bourdos, but apart from Duris, the main cast is all-American — and big names too, including John Malkovich and Evangeline Lilly from TV's "Lost."