Shapito-shou: Uvazhenie i sotrudnichestvo

While out on parole, Dennis reluctantly takes a job selling Christmas trees with his old buddy Rene in order to make enough money to buy his estranged daughter the piano she's always wanted. Two French Canadian ne'er-do-wells travel to New York City with a scheme to get rich quick selling Christmas trees. Easygoing charmer Rene (Paul Rudd) clashes with misanthropic ex-con Dennis (Paul Giamatti), whose wife Rene just stole. Still, this odd couple must make an honest go of it in this buddy comedy. —Anonymous It's late November, and convicted thief Dennis Girard has just been released from a Québec prison on parole. Despite wanting to go back to Therese, who is technically no longer his wife, and their adolescent daughter Michi, he finds beyond Therese no longer wanting to be with him, it would not be an easy thing to do for Michi's sake because of Therese's actions while he was in prison. Wanting in part to prove Therese wrong and in wanting to do something specific for Michi, Dennis is determined to go straight despite the depressed economy making jobs scarce, and his parole officer Tremblay being no help in this regard, thus turning back to a life of crime the path of least resistance. Dennis is able to convince his longtime friend and former partner in crime René, who has indeed gone straight and who Dennis learns is in a relationship with Therese on the cusp of marriage, that is if his current wife Marie will grant him a divorce, to bring him in as a partner in his seasonal business, namely transporting and selling Christmas trees in New York City, despite this work violating Dennis' parole in he not allowed to leave the district. Beyond the issue of Therese, René and Dennis' friendship and partnership will be tested in their concentrated time together in living and breathing the tree lot for close to a month. That test will also include how tempted either, but most specifically Dennis, will be in returning to a life of crime not if but when things go bad. Through it all, Dennis is befriended by their first customer, Olga, a Russian expat pianist now resorting to working as a live-in domestic for a periodontist, she who provides him with that much needed touchstone to real life. —Huggo