It's not just because of M. Cantona. There is something decidedly French about Looking For Eric, an unlikely new breezy comedy from Ken Loach. In stark contrast with Mr. Loach's previous work, Looking For Eric screams Hollywood summer remake; our money says Will Smith and a digitally enhanced Muhammad Ali will star. Probably.
Still, kitchen sink fans will recognise the beats beneath the whimsical Gallic accent. As the film opens there's a good deal of My Name Is Joe in the details; Eric (Steve Evets), a depressed middle-age postman and Cantona fanatic is descending into ennui, pining for his first love and stumbling through life with two tearaway stepchildren long since abandoned by his second wife. The gloom finally lifts when, through the magic of marijuana, his hero, the former French soccer powerhouse, turns up to play life coach and roach buddy.
As meta-movies go this is closer to the old Play It Again, Sam template than to the postmodern JCVD variant. Much of the comedy derives from Mr. Cantona's entertaining capacity for enigmatic philosophy. Played, as it says in the credits, by "lui-même", M. Cantona's talent for being, well, like M. Cantona, is the film's great selling point. Like Being John Malkovich, nobody but the French Beach Football manager himself could have sufficed.
Between joints, white wine and occasional trumpet solos, he leads his downtrodden charge back towards the twin comforts of friendship and family; "Non", cries the footballing legend as his postman chum talks us through a particularly splendid montage of M. Cantona's Greatest Goals, his finest moment on the pitch was not a goal but an assist.
That observation propels this sweet, warm-hearted film with a winning self-help formula. All this and jokes about seagulls.