SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

sandover An uneasy, probably lightheaded young man, portrayed with the right anxious anchoring for us viewers by Vincent Cassel, has a chance encounter with the voice of his great love that abandoned him mysteriously two years ago; I say his voice because he overhears a conversation and then just sees his love from the behind running away. He has the good luck of finding her hotel room keys and embarks on the dangerous, mysterious journey of discovery interspersed with the flashbacks of his earlier amorous journey with that woman that explains his infatuation, builds up the mystery for us, is not without its whimsical french humor, and shows him as a lightheaded younger version of himself contrasting with his more respectable, as in lawyer, version, which displays no french revolution ponytail.This is a hard cocktail to pull through. The writer/director makes this half of the story a Hitchcockian pot-pouri that ranges from Vertigo (as Scotty gets on tracking down Madeleine so Max here follows the car in an almost copy paste manner, and we also have the scene in the flower shop repeated with the same color-range) to Rear Window (the theme of voyeurism) to North by Northwest (the theme of identity, mistaken, searching in a hotel for a ghost of a person), to name what was obvious for me.Then the film shifts gears into a different cinematic spectrum. What does an apartment have? Well, it has a tenant - and that is the synopsis of the film: from building up a hitchcockian mystery it delivers us to the grotesquerie of Polanski's half-psychological tales. That for me is unworkable; except for Repulsion, that is mainly for Deneuve's performance, I do not care much for Polanski's oeuvre: there is always something rancidly overworked in his films - so, when you pass form Hitchcock's imperturbable style to something self-conscious, this brings the house down. Even if Belucci's beauty lures us or we find her acting puffy and with a distant core, she still has underdeveloped her star radiance for her to truly matter; even if Cassell plays his antics with more insight maybe than the film allows and his comedy is spot-on and intuitive and makes one certain this works as a comedy only, even if it is close to a delirious, masochistic conception of cinema as joke on the director's part, it is mainly that shift in tone that makes the film flop and exposes its weaknesses: as a thriller it has too many improbabilities; as a comedy (watch how the music in the film works towards that direction: the opening credits are more pop and pun than a thriller would allow as the delicious, and one fears consciously cheesy and sarcastic repetition of Aznavour) has a too serious structure; it works best when one conceives it as rancid commentary on French connection, to put it that way. (It has the same analogous relation watermarked de Palma has with watermarked Rorty in the States around that time masking aversion to theory as pragmatism once more; as in France with the "nouveau philosophes" and their awkward rediscovery of Kantianism, the way the nineties rediscovered noir with neo-bourgeois results.)It may be interesting to see what the director/writer did as producer with the American remake of the film, but then again it may not be that interesting.PS Bohringer gives an almost powerhouse performance, but is constantly at odds with the film. This could have been superb, if one could be persuaded that she is elusive as any version of noir allows, the way the scenario handles her nevertheless makes her presence in the end irrelevant, which is all the more pitiful, irrelevant as a bad parable for french social security, I am tempted to say. As in the meantime I have discovered, Romane was named after Roman Polanski! Now tell me this has nothing to do with the film; it is as if Mimouni wanted to revive the french genre of roman (pun obliged!) a clef in cinematic terms, which turns him into a mad prankster, and explains the enigma of his hapax cinematic endeavor in a most unfavorable light.

gcd70 All credit to writer/director Gilles Mimouni who fashioned this winding, twisting tale of deceit and betrayal. While keeping the utmost control, he maintains the audience at arm's length, never allowing them to become completely aware of the goings on. Even his clever denouement has you guessing.The three central performances are also top class, with Vincent Cassel, Romane Bohringer and Monica Bellucci doing their utmost to add to the mystery. Jean-Phillippe Ecoffey supplements strength in his supporting role. To give away plot details or character specifics would not be fair.Thierry Arbogast uses the camera effectively to sweep us through this enigma, and Cardine Biggerstaff's editing keeps the story a step ahead of us. The theme from Peter Chase is sublime in its marriage to the ideal of the script.Many may say Gilles Mimouni is trying to confront several deeper issues on the them of love. For me this is simply a haunting, elusive riddle that weaves a fascinating web. Only the French are capable of such tantalisation. Hollywood would have ruined this with a happy ending.Monday, March 2, 1998 - Hoyts CroydonNo-one does thriller quite like the French. When they get it right, they really get it right.Vincent Cassell is intriguing as the deceptive Max, Romane Bohringer obsessive as the new Lisa, and Monica Bellucci is mysterious as the first Lisa. The plot from Gilles Mimouni is a whirlwind of deliberate deception and fatally crossed wires.All credit must go to his manipulation of the clever plot, and the performances from the three leads. As Lucien, Jean-Phillippe Ecoffey is strong and emotional.Friday, January 15, 1999 - Video

John Francisco A lot has already been written about the film itself, so instead of adding to the noise I just want to say a few words on the two female actors.It has to be a daunting prospect for any actress to star, in a sense, versus the spectacular Monica Bellucci, but Romane Bohringer pulls it off to sensational ends. A film starring Monica Bellucci where I fall in love with the other girl?? That's not supposed to happen.It's been said a thousand times, but Monica Bellucci strikes the saddest figure in modern cinema. I have never before seen such innate sadness. She would not be out of place breaking Lon Chaney's heart.

vostf Naivety can be touching or naivety can be exasperating. Here it simply ebbs and flows between dully and dumbly exasperating.I almost watch it till the end but I could stand it no longer at 93 minutes out of 111. Not that it became worse but it didn't improve, it went on mechanically unreeling its protracted plot and I was no longer expecting it to have something looking like an end. Or worse if possible: I was fearing some kind of an über-melodramatically-tragic ending (please don't tell me, I don't give a damn). Grumf! it's not often that I'm so bored that I dare be impolite enough to leave before the end.Simply put: the director is really really bad, hence performances are always bordering pathetic. The plot structure is... (well I'm not sure somebody understood plot structure on this production) loose thus lousy. We first come to learn the setup through a series of flashbacks which only dilute the exposition over more than 30 minutes (you're speaking of an ordeal!) when nothing moves forward. So we know everything through Max's POV, which is nothing compare to what happens when the director switches (by mistake I guess) to another POV where we know exactly what happens. And the director still thinks he's clever, unveiling new bits and parts of his beloved flashbacks that fill in the blanks. I heard of a director dubbed the master of suspense; please meet the master of procrastination.At least there's one good thing in this overblown mess: art direction and location scouting in Paris are great.(note to self: never buy a DVD for 3 bucks again)