I give it a 5 for the fact that it is entertaining, but I think this movie made in 2002 just benefited from the post-Amelie effect! It's not well played, the scenario is quite poor, and sometimes rather silly. Although it's not the worst thing in this movie, as a French lawyer, I realize it's very inconsistent ( especially the legal/criminal aspect). If you wanna see a good French movie about this kind of story you should rather watch Anna M ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814659/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 ) It's also with the great Isabelle Carre but this time SHE is the crazy one! and she is amazing, the movie is more subtle and profound.

I have not yet seen this film but from what I have read, it seems to describe the experience of erotomania -- the delusion that someone else is in love with you -- quite accurately and creatively. I am assuming erotomania here is portrayed as a true medical condition, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and not just something that afflicts the "morally weak". I am glad that there is an erotomania version of "A Beautiful Mind" out there.I plan to rent this film tomorrow. Hopefully it will not disappoint.-- "Angelique, a young student, is in love with a married doctor. We see her attempts to make him leave his pregnant wife, but he does not appear for meetings or finally the booked journey to Florence. Then the movie is turned back to the beginning, and the view changes: We are now following the view of the doctor instead of Angelique's. And things look quite different now..."

He Loves me, He Loves Me Not – The very title conjures up images of lovelorn girls bemoaning their romantic tribulations, falling in and out of love and pursuing the un-pursuable. At first it seems like the director makes the typical plot work, with a vibrant visual eye and knack for keeping the relationship at a fast but believable pace. For a time it's ridiculously but bearably sugary, even the opening credits are laid over images of love heart merchandise, with a delightful bells and whistles score chiming out for new romance in the background. As expected he state of the relationship gets progressively worse, the tone then fades slowly into a darker one, becoming like increasingly like a tragic melodrama. Angelique, the central character, goes overboard and overreacts to the downward slide – As happens due to love, so we sympathise. Then everything changes, a monumental twist occurs and the film changes into a different one. The audacity in such a move isn't because it's especially deceptive or unjustifiable (ala The Usual Suspects), but because it so fluidly and intelligently reinvents everything we've already seen – But yet still ties in with all we've witnessed, making complete sense because of how it is implemented within the boundaries of the film. The sweetness tastes bitter, pleasant events become darkly comedic and the emotional tragedies of the first half have to be urgently reconsidered.Audrey Tautou, as well as playing the Amelie charm and feminine charisma wonderfully, adds a new level of oddity and disturbance rarely seen in roles played by young women. In tune with the films development her characters real nature comes out gradually, but because she plays up the quintessential lightness it's almost hard to believe when more is revealed about her. I found myself asking "How could Audrey Tautou do that???", which was obviously the reaction the director and Tautou herself wanted to project – With her image adorned to the character, the eventual narrative twists and re-assessments that follow are made all the more hard to swallow but even more interesting to consider. An inspired piece of casting and one of many brilliant uses of subversion the film employs. The cinematography carries the same structural and performance development, with the first section making use of slow-motion, colour and intentionally formal methods, in many ways lulling the viewer and taking advantage of the expectation that what we see is the one and only truth. The second half appears more shadowy, with an emphasis on hand-held movements. More scenes are inside with a greater feeling of paranoia and worry, with very little bright light or colour. The background appears to be out of focus more often than not, whether this is the case or I just was more aware of it, looking out for another threat, after the sudden burst of unpredictability the twist unleashes.Even with the elements of romance and suspense, the director manages to squeeze a perfect amount of dark humour out of genuinely macabre situations. Not a single joke is told, but through manipulation of musical and narrative cues and clues, there are some hilariously dark and bizarre comedy elements at play – Not the kind of humour I personally would expect from the romance genre, least of all French romantic cinema. Equally intelligently worked in are some of the more grim strands, looking at the film as a whole some of the revelations are quite shocking, but the subtle humour and tragedy are both secondary to the expertly weaved story structure and character expositions. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is riveting because of the director's ability to celebrate, indulge in, and subvert convention. In a "Why didn't I notice that?" fashion the director toys with the fundamentals of perception, in the internal sense of character focus and reaction, and the external case of playing with the viewer's engrained expectations of structure and narrative. The plot does slightly peter out towards the end, as all of the pieces of the puzzle have to naturally fall into place, but we're left looking at a pleasantly surprising, challenging work of great excitement. One for those who like a little bit of everything in their cinema.

À la folie... pas du tout (2002) aka He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not was written/ directed by Laetitia Colombani and starred Audrey Tautou. It was made right after 'Amelie' and it looks like 'Amelie', especially in the opening scenes on the beautiful and colorful streets of Bordeaux that prepare a viewer for the light romantic story. Young and pretty Art student Angelique (Audrey Tautou) seems to have found her fabulous destiny and the love of her life in Laic, a cardiologist (Samuel Le Bihan) who seems to be as much in love with her as she is with him. But is he? And what about his wife who is pregnant with their first child? Step by step, the film takes an interesting turn and becomes a story rather dark and disturbing, told from different perspectives, Rashomon - style. What started as a light and sweet romantic comedy, very successfully turned into a well made thriller. The way the young writer/director presented and contrasted two points of view at the same events, is remarkable. We all know from Geometry classes that parallel lines never cross, at least in Euclid's Geometry they don't but sometimes when you look at the lines in space from certain POV, it looks like they cross – I kept thinking about it while watching He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not which I highly recommend. Audrey Tautou was wonderful – without giving too much out, I just say that she played a character that I found deeper, darker, and more interesting than Amelie, the dark side of Amelie.