He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
... movie reviews
tue 2005-nov-08 01:37:41 pst
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Sunday night we watched He
Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (French title: A la
folie... pas du tout). It was good, though it suffered a bit from
the "plot summary reveals too much" problem -- I think I would have
liked it better if I'd known less going in.
<spoiler detail="medium">
So I guess I'd read something (maybe the back of the DVD case back
when I used to go to the video store) which revealed that the story is
told first from her perspective and then from his, as the film goes
from romance to thriller... So during the first half I knew not to
trust her view of events, and so on.
One interesting thing about it is that the way they do it, there's
nothing in the first half that's actually lying to the audience -- it
simply misleads us through clever editing. So it's sort of an example
of the "unreliable narrator" literary device, but in a somewhat
different way. Perhaps the more literal unreliable narrator works
better in text than film; and in film it works better to accomplish it
through careful inclusion and omission? I dunno.
</spoiler>
In any case, as usual, Audrey Tautou gives a good performance, and
she's reason enough to see it.
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