| À la Folie... Pas du Tout (He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not) |
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DVD cover of À la Folie... Pas du Tout |
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| Directed by | Laetitia Colombani |
| Produced by | Dominique Brunner Charles Gassot |
| Written by | Laetitia Colombani Caroline Thivel |
| Starring | Audrey Tautou Samuel Le Bihan Isabelle Carré Clément Sibony Sophie Guillemin |
| Music by | Jérôme Coullet |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | February 14, 2003 (LA/NY) |
| Running time | 96 min. |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (French: À la folie... pas du tout) 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.
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In the opening scene, Angélique (Audrey Tautou) 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.
In a BBC interview in October 2003[1], 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."
The film, repeatedly compared by film critics with Amélie, received an overall very positive reaction, holding a 73% Fresh (i.e. positive) rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[2]
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."[3] 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."[4]
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 Attractions, 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."[5] 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."[6]
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.
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