HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT (A la folie...pas du tout)
# stars based on 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Samuel Goldwyn Films Directed by: Laetitia Colombani Written by: Laetitia Colombani, Caroline Thivel Cast: Audrey Tautou, Samuel Le Bihan, Isabelle Carre, Clement Sibony, Sophie Guillemin Screened at: Review, NYC, 2/6/03
There's a reason that so many plays, books and films are about love, easily more than exist about warfare and murder. For people like me who have never even seen anyone with a gun drawn and pointed at someone much less witness its use, love is universal. Everyone at some time has either been in love or dreamed about the feeling. Laetitia Colombani's first film feature makes good use of this universality to hone in on unrequited love: who in this world has never sought the heart of another who declines to respond in kind?
"He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" stars Audrey Tautou, who made a big splash just over a year ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie." "Amelie" is about a sheltered young woman who manipulates people around her to make their lives happier but is clueless when she meets a man who is attracted to her. Playing now both in type and against it (thus making her foray into Colombani's feature a deeper and more challenging one), Angelique (Audrey Tautou) appears near the colorful opening scene, buying a single flower for her beloved, Loic (Samuel Le Bihan), a cardiologist who is married to a lawyer, Rachel (Isabelle Carre), now five months' pregnant. As Colombani reveals Angelique's story, the principal character has had a fling with the married man who has assured her that he is going to leave his wife, though Angelique's friend and coworker, Heloise (Sophie Guillemin) is skeptical.
This is not a conventional romance, however, the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl gets boy so overused in Hollywood. The twist arises when Colombani brings the film to a halt, literally rewinding it to show us, Rashomon style, the distinct way that the cardiologist perceives the romance. As the comic features of the tale grow dark, photographer Pierre Aim dulls the colors The screen, bathed at first in red for the romantic Angelique and blue for the more stately doctor, turn progressively duller to match the moods of the principals.
While Samuel Le Bihan's Loic dominates the second phase of the film, this is Tatou's movie. Happily she loses some of the grinning-idiot features that marked her major introduction to the world in "Amelie," but still maintains the annoying plastered grin that presumably represents the happiness of a woman in love.
Colombani has read her psychology, though common sense could tell us that a woman who is repeatedly cold-shouldered by the object of deep affection may conjure the kind of fury that is not found even in hell. A genre-bender, "He Loves Me..." mixes comedy with psychological suspenser well so that one online critic who has caviled "in the end we are left outside...More than a bit frustrated...and unsure whether we should laugh or cry" is missing the point. A film that keeps its audience off balance is has a leg up. Given the director's imagination and a credible performance by Tatou as a woman totally immersed in the object of her love, "A la folie...pas du tout" as the French call the picture is a solid first feature by its gifted regisseur.
Not Rated. 92 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 34058 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 839567 X-RT-TitleID: 1120347 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews