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He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (film)
Encyclopedia
He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not is a 2002 French
psychological thriller
film
directed by Laetitia Colombani. The film focuses on a young artist, played by Audrey Tautou
, and a married cardiologist, played by Samuel Le Bihan
, with whom she is dangerously obsessed. The film studies the condition of erotomania
and is both an example of the nonlinear and "unreliable narrator
" forms of storytelling.
) purchases a single pink rose at a flower shop to be delivered to her lover, Dr. Loïc Le Garrec (Samuel Le Bihan
).
Angélique is a successful art student who has won a scholarship. In between creating her art projects, she has a part-time job at a cafe and house sits for a wealthy vacationing family. Angélique's friend David (Clément Sibony) disapproves of Angélique's affair with Loïc, who is married, but Angélique insists that Loïc will leave his wife for her.
When Loïc's wife, Rachel (Isabelle Carré
), has a miscarriage, the pair separate and Angélique prepares to leave with Loïc on a romantic getaway to Florence, Italy. However, Loïc doesn't meet Angélique at the airport, having chosen to mend things with his wife. This is the last straw for Angélique, who is thrown into a self-destructive cycle of clinical depression
, ultimately losing her job and scholarship. While watching the news one night, she learns that Loïc has been arrested for assaulting one of his patients, Sonia Jasmin (Nathalie Krebs). She goes to Sonia's house to convince her to drop the charges. The conversation turns into a scuffle and Sonia, who has a heart condition, has a heart attack and dies. Angélique plants evidence to make it look like a robbery.
Thinking that this will win him back, Angélique goes to see Loïc at his office, arriving just in time to see him being arrested for Sonia Jasmin's murder, and embracing his wife as he is dragged away. Angélique returns home, turns on the gas and lies down on the floor.
At this point the film rewinds to the opening scene when Angélique bought the pink rose. This time the film follows the delivery boy and the subsequent events play out from the viewpoint of Loïc.
Loïc receives the pink rose and assumes that his wife sent it to him. It is revealed that Loïc barely knows Angélique, and they cross paths only incidentally due to the fact that Angélique is house sitting
the home that belongs to Loïc and Rachel's neighbor. However, Loïc receives Angélique's gifts and messages, not knowing who sent them. It is revealed that Rachel's miscarriage was caused by "someone" running her down with a moped; earlier in the film, Angélique is shown after an "accident" which ruined her friend's moped and injured her arm.
Loïc comes to believe that his stalker is Sonia Jasmin, one of his patients. He physically attacks Sonia, demanding she reveal that she is his stalker. Sonia presses charges for assault, then dies of a heart attack. Loïc is arrested as the prime suspect for her "murder". At his arrest, Rachel tells the police that he was with her on the night of the death, which clears him of all charges.
That night, Loïc hears police sirens and sees an ambulance pull up to his neighbor's house where Angélique has just tried to commit suicide. As a doctor, Loïc performs mouth to mouth resuscitation which causes Angélique to regain consciousness. Now aware of Angélique, he considers the possibility that she is his stalker. Loïc explores the house that Angélique was house-sitting, and there he finds a life-sized garbage mosaic
of himself.
After being released from the hospital, Angélique visits Loïc at his clinic. Loïc tells her that they never had nor will ever have any connection. As he turns his back on her, Angélique strikes him over the head with a brass figurine. She is then arrested, diagnosed with erotomania
and remanded to a mental institution. Rachel stands by her husband as he recovers from his injuries, with a scene showing the couple in a house filled with their children as Loïc hobbles around on a cane.
The epilogue of the film is set five years later, when Angélique is released from the mental institution. Her therapist praises her progress and tells her, "If you keep taking your medication, you will be fine." However, when the cleaning man is clearing Angélique's room, he discovers her pills have been glued to the wall behind the wardrobe in a mosaic of Loïc. A quote from a woman with the same problem who appears in a similar situation is shown.
interview in October 2003, actress Audrey Tautou commented on working with director Laetitia Colombani: "I found her very precise. She knew exactly what she wanted. Even though she's very young, she managed to control the whole production. She knew her subject - this strange kind of madness - very well because she had studied it for a very long time."
, received an overall very positive reaction, holding a 73% Fresh (i.e. positive) rating on Rotten Tomatoes
.
In the United States, Mick LaSalle
noted it was the "first feature from 26-year-old Laetitia Colombani and represents about as assured a debut as they come. The first smart thing, of many, that Colombani does is cast Audrey Tautou in the lead role. Tautou has made several movies, but in America she is known for only one, Amélie
, in which she played a wide-eyed innocent. Here she is just as wide-eyed, but if she's innocent it's only by reason of insanity. He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not has its own charms, but part of its wicked kick is that it's the anti-Amélie, presenting romantic fixation, not as noble and sweet, but objectively, as something selfish and volatile....[the film is] driven by a shrewd vision and, beneath its cool French surface, a well-placed sense of moral indignation. Tautou could not be better: She's infuriating — as well as emotionally present every moment onscreen." Richard Schickel
called Colombani a "terrifically assured filmmaker" whose "twice-told tale" is the "basis for an intricately ironic, darkly witty movie with a twist ending that is both utterly surprising and utterly right"; in a comparison with Tautou's performance in Amélie, the film "displays a more dangerous kind of innocence with a charm that shades off into obsessive madness in very gentle, persuasive increments. Mostly, it's because this French film brings a cool, almost Pascalian
logic to the messy topic of erotomania."
In the United Kingdom, The Independent
called it "an assured, if slightly too obvious thriller by first-time director Laetitia Colombani"; the film's originality in its subject matter, called a "welcome change from the offensive 'woman scorned' scenario of so many Fatal Attraction
s, is lost somewhat in her treatment — which gives first Angelique's perspective, before rewinding to show Loic's. But a serious plus is Tautou, whose creepy, disturbing performance proves that the wide-eyed Amélie is a young actress with range." The Evening Standard
called it an "irredeemably bad French film" with "characters [that] are cartoon representations of good and evil. By the time we work out what's really going on, it's too late: Angélique has earned our hatred and Loïc has shown himself too passive to hold our interest."
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
psychological thriller
Psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on characters. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
directed by Laetitia Colombani. The film focuses on a young artist, played by Audrey Tautou
Audrey Tautou
Audrey Justine Tautou is a French model and film actress, best known for playing the title character in the award-winning 2001 film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Sophie Neveu in the 2006 thriller The Da Vinci Code, Irène in Priceless and Coco Chanel in Coco avant Chanel...
, and a married cardiologist, played by Samuel Le Bihan
Samuel Le Bihan
Samuel Le Bihan is a French actor, notable for his role in Brotherhood of the Wolf.-Cinema:* 1993: Promenades d'été, directed by René Féret* 1993: La place d'un autre, directed by René Féret...
, with whom she is dangerously obsessed. The film studies the condition of erotomania
Erotomania
Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger or famous person, is in love with him or her. The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania...
and is both an example of the nonlinear and "unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
" forms of storytelling.
Plot
In the opening scene, Angélique (Audrey TautouAudrey Tautou
Audrey Justine Tautou is a French model and film actress, best known for playing the title character in the award-winning 2001 film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Sophie Neveu in the 2006 thriller The Da Vinci Code, Irène in Priceless and Coco Chanel in Coco avant Chanel...
) purchases a single pink rose at a flower shop to be delivered to her lover, Dr. Loïc Le Garrec (Samuel Le Bihan
Samuel Le Bihan
Samuel Le Bihan is a French actor, notable for his role in Brotherhood of the Wolf.-Cinema:* 1993: Promenades d'été, directed by René Féret* 1993: La place d'un autre, directed by René Féret...
).
Angélique is a successful art student who has won a scholarship. In between creating her art projects, she has a part-time job at a cafe and house sits for a wealthy vacationing family. Angélique's friend David (Clément Sibony) disapproves of Angélique's affair with Loïc, who is married, but Angélique insists that Loïc will leave his wife for her.
When Loïc's wife, Rachel (Isabelle Carré
Isabelle Carré
Isabelle Carré is a French actress, who has appeared in more than 40 films since 1989. She won a César Award for Best Actress for her role in Se souvenir des belles choses , and has been nominated a further six times, for Beau fixe , Le Hussard sur le toit , La Femme défendue , Les Sentiments ,...
), has a miscarriage, the pair separate and Angélique prepares to leave with Loïc on a romantic getaway to Florence, Italy. However, Loïc doesn't meet Angélique at the airport, having chosen to mend things with his wife. This is the last straw for Angélique, who is thrown into a self-destructive cycle of clinical depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, ultimately losing her job and scholarship. While watching the news one night, she learns that Loïc has been arrested for assaulting one of his patients, Sonia Jasmin (Nathalie Krebs). She goes to Sonia's house to convince her to drop the charges. The conversation turns into a scuffle and Sonia, who has a heart condition, has a heart attack and dies. Angélique plants evidence to make it look like a robbery.
Thinking that this will win him back, Angélique goes to see Loïc at his office, arriving just in time to see him being arrested for Sonia Jasmin's murder, and embracing his wife as he is dragged away. Angélique returns home, turns on the gas and lies down on the floor.
At this point the film rewinds to the opening scene when Angélique bought the pink rose. This time the film follows the delivery boy and the subsequent events play out from the viewpoint of Loïc.
Loïc receives the pink rose and assumes that his wife sent it to him. It is revealed that Loïc barely knows Angélique, and they cross paths only incidentally due to the fact that Angélique is house sitting
House sitting
House sitting is the practice whereby a landlord , leaving their house for a period of time, entrusts it to one or more "house sitters", who by a mutual agreement are entitled to live there rent-free in exchange for assuming responsibilities such as taking care of the homeowner's pets, performing...
the home that belongs to Loïc and Rachel's neighbor. However, Loïc receives Angélique's gifts and messages, not knowing who sent them. It is revealed that Rachel's miscarriage was caused by "someone" running her down with a moped; earlier in the film, Angélique is shown after an "accident" which ruined her friend's moped and injured her arm.
Loïc comes to believe that his stalker is Sonia Jasmin, one of his patients. He physically attacks Sonia, demanding she reveal that she is his stalker. Sonia presses charges for assault, then dies of a heart attack. Loïc is arrested as the prime suspect for her "murder". At his arrest, Rachel tells the police that he was with her on the night of the death, which clears him of all charges.
That night, Loïc hears police sirens and sees an ambulance pull up to his neighbor's house where Angélique has just tried to commit suicide. As a doctor, Loïc performs mouth to mouth resuscitation which causes Angélique to regain consciousness. Now aware of Angélique, he considers the possibility that she is his stalker. Loïc explores the house that Angélique was house-sitting, and there he finds a life-sized garbage mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
of himself.
After being released from the hospital, Angélique visits Loïc at his clinic. Loïc tells her that they never had nor will ever have any connection. As he turns his back on her, Angélique strikes him over the head with a brass figurine. She is then arrested, diagnosed with erotomania
Erotomania
Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger or famous person, is in love with him or her. The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania...
and remanded to a mental institution. Rachel stands by her husband as he recovers from his injuries, with a scene showing the couple in a house filled with their children as Loïc hobbles around on a cane.
The epilogue of the film is set five years later, when Angélique is released from the mental institution. Her therapist praises her progress and tells her, "If you keep taking your medication, you will be fine." However, when the cleaning man is clearing Angélique's room, he discovers her pills have been glued to the wall behind the wardrobe in a mosaic of Loïc. A quote from a woman with the same problem who appears in a similar situation is shown.
Production
In a BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
interview in October 2003, actress Audrey Tautou commented on working with director Laetitia Colombani: "I found her very precise. She knew exactly what she wanted. Even though she's very young, she managed to control the whole production. She knew her subject - this strange kind of madness - very well because she had studied it for a very long time."
Reception
The film, repeatedly compared by film critics with AmélieAmélie
Amélie is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Jeunet with Guillaume Laurant, the film is a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre...
, received an overall very positive reaction, holding a 73% Fresh (i.e. positive) rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
In the United States, Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle is an American Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] [[film reviewer] and the author of two books on pre-[[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays Code]] Hollywood...
noted it was the "first feature from 26-year-old Laetitia Colombani and represents about as assured a debut as they come. The first smart thing, of many, that Colombani does is cast Audrey Tautou in the lead role. Tautou has made several movies, but in America she is known for only one, Amélie
Amélie
Amélie is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Jeunet with Guillaume Laurant, the film is a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre...
, in which she played a wide-eyed innocent. Here she is just as wide-eyed, but if she's innocent it's only by reason of insanity. He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not has its own charms, but part of its wicked kick is that it's the anti-Amélie, presenting romantic fixation, not as noble and sweet, but objectively, as something selfish and volatile....[the film is] driven by a shrewd vision and, beneath its cool French surface, a well-placed sense of moral indignation. Tautou could not be better: She's infuriating — as well as emotionally present every moment onscreen." Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel
Richard Warren Schickel is an American author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review....
called Colombani a "terrifically assured filmmaker" whose "twice-told tale" is the "basis for an intricately ironic, darkly witty movie with a twist ending that is both utterly surprising and utterly right"; in a comparison with Tautou's performance in Amélie, the film "displays a more dangerous kind of innocence with a charm that shades off into obsessive madness in very gentle, persuasive increments. Mostly, it's because this French film brings a cool, almost Pascalian
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
logic to the messy topic of erotomania."
In the United Kingdom, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
called it "an assured, if slightly too obvious thriller by first-time director Laetitia Colombani"; the film's originality in its subject matter, called a "welcome change from the offensive 'woman scorned' scenario of so many Fatal Attraction
Fatal Attraction
Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American thriller blended with horror, directed by Adrian Lyne and stars Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer. The film centers around a married man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end, resulting in emotional blackmail, stalking...
s, is lost somewhat in her treatment — which gives first Angelique's perspective, before rewinding to show Loic's. But a serious plus is Tautou, whose creepy, disturbing performance proves that the wide-eyed Amélie is a young actress with range." The Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
called it an "irredeemably bad French film" with "characters [that] are cartoon representations of good and evil. By the time we work out what's really going on, it's too late: Angélique has earned our hatred and Loïc has shown himself too passive to hold our interest."
Box office
The film was also a box office success grossing $2,802,202 in France alone. The film was also given limited release to 23 movie theaters in North America where it grossed $1,011,102 during its theatrical run. The film was also a modest success internationally grossing $101,483 in Austria, $13,306 in Czech Republic, $92,473 in Finland $720,970 In Germany, $116,274 in Hong Kong, $60,825 in Hungary $42,151 in Poland, $25,354 in Taiwan, and $140,124 in Turkey, for a worldwide total of $5,126,264.External links
- He Loves Me, He loves Me Not on Yahoo! MoviesYahoo! MoviesYahoo! Movies , provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production...