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Saint Amour

What: Saint Amour Where: Cineplex Odeon When: Friday, 9:45 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.

What: Saint Amour

Where: Cineplex Odeon

When: Friday, 9:45 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.

Rating: two and a half stars

The assumption that a film must be praiseworthy just because it stars Gerard Depardieu is obliterated in this fitfully funny, increasingly tiresome French variation on Sideways, in which he appears to have phoned in his performance as an aging, recently widowed farmer who hires a cocky young Parisian cabbie to take him on a male-bonding road trip through France’s wine regions with Bruno (Benoit Poelvoorde), his self-loathing, sexually frustrated son. Despite some outrageous comic interludes and absurd sexual encounters, this redneck buffoons-on-the-loose lark is annoyingly aimless. It’s also laden with bizarre contrivances and clichés that feebly contrast country and city living. Without a strong narrative foundation to link a succession of silly sight gags that give way to misplaced pathos, this meditation on wine, women and midlife crises prematurely self-destructs.

Times Colonist movie writer Michael D. Reid is covering the Victoria Film Festival, which continues until Feb. 12. Ratings are out of five stars.