My Worst Nightmare (Mon pire cauchemar) is a 2011 French-Belgian romantic comedy-drama directed by Anne Fontaine. It stars Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Poelvoorde, André Dussollier and Virginie Efira.
Agathe is an uptight, icy art dealer living in an expensive apartment in Paris with her longtime partner, François, and teenage son. One day, François spontaneously invites the vulgar, skirt-chasing Patrick, who is the father of their son's best friend, to renovate the apartment without Agathe's consent. Agathe and Patrick clash repeatedly due to their differences in personality and lifestyle, but find themselves drawn to each other after François abandons the family for another woman.
Tropes:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: When François returns, he thinks that his family has been in shambles ever since he abandoned them, and is clearly hoping that they have missed him so much that they will beg for him to come back. However, he arrives to find everyone operating normally and hardly having noticed his absence.
- Act of True Love: Patrick finally gets his act together and takes responsibility for his life in order to win Agathe back. Though she initially rejects him, she changes her mind and sells the defaced portrait as a work of art, and opens up the "ladies' aquarium" that he always dreamed of starting, which ends up being a huge success.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Agathe admits to Patrick in Belgium that she doesn't just want him back so that he will take care of Tony — she needs him, too.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Patrick helps Agathe loosen up, and by the end, her ex comments that it's the first time in twenty years that he's seen her be nice.
- Disposable Fiancé: Both Agathe and François end up as this. Despite being partners for decades, François dumps her for the younger and more free-spirited Julie; when he finally returns, he proposes marriage, but she turns him down and reveals her own affair with Patrick.
- Establishing Character Moment: Agathe demands a bus driver go faster so that she won't be late for a parent-teacher conference that she immediately takes control of, whereas Patrick arrives late and immediately disrupts the whole thing.
- Granola Girl: Julie is a nature-loving thrill-seeker who refuses to have any electronics in the house and parrots New Age-psychology lines.
- Heel Realization: After Agathe finds him in Belgium, Patrick sends her away because he's realized what a toxic presence he is on her and his son.
- Hidden Depths: Agathe first reveals her wild side by casually tossing an empty champagne glass across the art gallery; her unaware subordinates the next day shudder at the idea that they were patronized by what must have been a low-class guest.
- Ice Queen: Well, she's played by Isabelle Huppert, who's made pretty much an entire career out of playing these. Agathe is chilly and exacting with coworkers and family alike; it's no surprise she has seemingly no friends.
- Innocently Insensitive: Adrien, unaware of who the child services workers are, frankly tells them about the dysfunction that the family is currently facing.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Patrick. He genuinely loves his son, and he starts bonding with Agathe because he feels guilty that he encouraged François to leave.
- Marriage of Convenience: Agathe and Patrick get married so that he can keep custody of Tony.
- May–December Romance: François is sixty when he gets together with Julie, who looks no older than her mid-thirties. By the end of the film, she's pregnant, and Agathe teases him over how old of a father he'll be.
- Missing Mom: Patrick has long forgotten who Tony's mother is, as he was just dumped into his arms one day by a hookup. Though it doesn't bother him, Tony is secretly devastated that he has no mother.
- Odd Couple: Agathe and Patrick, obviously, but also Patrick and François, who strike up an Odd Friendship as François is intrigued by Patrick's carefree and promiscuous lifestyle, which he himself is too demure to pursue.
- One Head Taller: Patrick has more than half a foot on the petite Agathe.
- Parent with New Paramour: Adrien isn't bothered by Patrick's presence in the house, but he takes offense once he and Agathe start dating, causing him and Tony to argue.
- Really Gets Around: Patrick is an unrepentant skirt-chaser who considers it an act of charity to sleep with as many women as possible, especially if they're ugly. He doesn't even know who Tony's mother is, as she just showed up one day and handed him the baby before leaving.
- Second-Act Breakup: Second and third. They first break up when a drunken Patrick embarrasses her at a dinner she refused to invite him to, which causes him to flee to Belgium. They reunite and even marry, but when his partying leads to the expensive portrait she's gifted him — which he can sell for tens of thousands of dollars in order to finance his dream — getting defaced, she gets fed up and dumps him.
- Sexless Marriage: François admits to Patrick that he and Agathe rarely, if ever, have sex anymore.
- Slobs Versus Snobs: The wealthy, successful, and well-educated Agathe shudders at the idea of the lazy Adrien going to vocational school. She looks down on the blue-collar, homeless Patrick, who is proud to pay no taxes and live on welfare. She ends up having to change her mind when Adrien's schooling takes a nosedive, and she gets close to the underprivileged, but brilliant Tony.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The meek François is initially drawn to Julie's active lifestyle because it makes him feel more alive, but quickly learns he's not cut out for it.
- Uptight Loves Wild: The strict, no-nonsense Agathe is drawn to the lewd, but fun-loving Patrick. By the end of the movie, she's embraced her vulgar and spontaneous side, while he's a levelheaded and upstanding citizen.
