Review of He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (2002) by Sandra S — 20 Apr 2009

The literal translation of [i]À la folie... pas du tout[/i] is closer to "madly . . . not at all." It turns out to be a cultural translation as well as a simple linguistic one. American girls grow up picking petals off flowers and chanting, "He loves me . . . he loves me not." Here is our English-language title's origins. On the other hand, young French girls chant, "[i]Il m'aime un peu, beaucoup, à la folie,pas du tout[/i]"--"He loves me a little, a lot, madly, not at all." Same concept, really. The French just get more options, apparently. I have to say, I like the French title better. No, it's not as familiar to American ears, but I think it works better with the story. It's that pun on the word "mad," which I'm pretty sure is a pun in French as well.

The lovely Audrey Tatou of [i]Amélie[/i] is Angélique, a young French artist in Bordeaux. She seems to have a really great life. She's house-sitting in a great house. She's doing really great work in art school. She has a wonderful friend in Héloïse (Sophie Guillemin), and she's in love with Loïc (Samuel Le Bihan), a handsome young cardiologist. Okay, he's married. And her friend David (Clément Sibony) is worried, largely because he's in love with her himself. But Angélique is not concerned with such petty things. Okay, sure, Loïc's wife, Rachel (Isabelle Carré), is pregnant. But it's all going to be okay. Really. Because she loves Loïc, and Loïc loves her, and really, what's everyone so upset about? He's going to leave Rachel for her, and they're going to live happily ever after, right? But the more calm Angélique seems, the more worried those around her seem to get. She's hocked the dining room table at the place she's housesitting to buy Loïc a present. One of his patients accuses him of assault and then turns up dead. And through it all, Angélique smiles and smiles . . . .

When the story rewinds, the brightness behind those eyes takes on a slightly different cast. It is only then that we take on the concept of the unreliable narrator. Everything actually shown through Angélique's eyes really happened. She does not tell us anything false. She just . . . selectively edits. Even before we see Loïc's version, of course, we know that something isn't quite right, but I don't think we're prepared for what we see through his eyes. It doesn't take long before we start to realize what's really going on, and it's not any of the possibilities I, for one, had started the movie with.

It's relatively rare when actors from foreign films turn up in American films--sure, a lot of people make the transition, but there are a [i]lot[/i] of foreign actors. Audrey Tautou, sadly, is in [i]The Da Vinci Code[/i], poor thing. But that wasn't really what I was looking for when I went to IMDB. I desperately wanted to know the name of the guy who played David. Clément Sibony is not the world's most distinctive young man, but he caught my eye. This, you must understand, is because he looks rather astonishingly like a French Dustin Diamond--that's Screech from [i]Saved by the Bell[/i]. I mean, the women of the movie are pretty much all lovely in their way--either elfin, like Audrey Tautou, or pale and ethereal, like Isabelle Carré. Samuel Le Bihan is not an unattractive man. Mathilde Blache, who plays young Léa, is simply adorable. But in the middle of all these people, there's the Guy Who Looks Like Screech.

Do not go into this movie if you are expecting a lighthearted nothing comedy. It starts out that way, but the farther the movie progresses, the darker the comedy gets. You expect to get won over by Audrey Tautou's charms, and certainly that's true. You expect the world to shape itself around her, and in a way, that's true as well. However, it's not the lighthearted way [i]Amélie[/i] charms us, the way she as a character in that movie makes things better for those who deserve it. This is a far weirder version, but no less enchanting for all that.