Menteuse builds a chaotically funny multiverse out of little white lies, August 20 at Alliance Française

People-pleasing goes haywire as Visions Ouest presents the sequel to the hit Quebec comedy Menteur

Anne-Élisabeth Bossé and Antoine Bertrand in *Menteuse.*

Visions Ouest presents Menteuse at Alliance Française on August 20 at 7 pm

SILLY? CHECK. FAR-FETCHED? Check. Unhinged? Maybe. But amid its trip into a lighthearted multiverse of lying, the farcically funny Quebec film Menteuse actually might have something to say about our aversion to truth.

Virginie (quirky comedian Anne-Élisabeth Bossé) is what you might call an extreme people pleaser—to the point where she’ll tell almost anyone what they want to hear. And usually that involves a nonstop stream of little white lies. (“Balding? No, I don’t see it at all,” she says to a guy with a hairline that’s not just receded but almost entirely disappeared.) Her boyfriend Phil (lovable bear of a Quebec comedic actor Antoine Bertrand) is aghast—not just because he sees her spinning tales to comfort people, but because he remembers the consequences his twin brother suffered in the original 2019 film, Menteur (a box-office hit in Quebec). That was when, through some whacked-out act of the universe, all of his lies suddenly came true. And it’s about to happen to Virginie too, sending her, her family, and her friends into a spiral of new realities as she tries to fix lies with lies.

It’s all pretty light and inoffensive stuff: for example, fibbing “I love kids” sends Virginie into the holds of a packed children’s play-gym; bragging about caring for the environment transplants her into an over-the-top eco house. Blink and Virginie has Botoxed lips, or Phil is a tracksuit-wearing TikTok star; blink again, and the characters are thrust into a reality TV show about marriage.

It’s unabashedly goofy stuff, with the biggest laughs coming from watching the lead character sink further and further into a web of compulsive fibs. Beneath all that, you start to see inklings of why Virginie is stretching the truth—she’s kind and compassionate, and she might be trying to suppress her real, uninhibited self. But we won’t lie: it never gets too deep.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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