He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (film)

Infobox_Film
name = He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not


caption = DVD cover of He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
director = Laetitia Colombani
producer = Dominique Brunner, Charles Gassot
writer = Laetitia Colombani, Caroline Thivel
starring = Audrey Tautou, Samuel Le Bihan, Isabelle Carré, Clément Sibony, Sophie Guillemin
music = Jérôme Coullet
distributor = Sony Pictures Entertainment
released = February 14, 2003 (LA/NY)
runtime = 92 min.
language = French
imdb_id = 0291579|

"He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not" ( _fr. À la folie... pas du tout) is a 2002 French film starring Audrey Tautou.

Plot

Angélique (Audrey Tautou), a young art student from Bordeaux, purchases a single pink rose for her married lover, Dr. Loïc Le Garrec (Samuel Le Bihan), a successful cardiologist. Both she and the delivery boy leave the shop and depart in opposite directions.

Angélique is a successful art student, having just won a scholarship and grant. She also has a part time job at a cafe, helps her friend Héloïse (Sophie Guillemin) look after her little sister, and also housesits for a wealthy vacationing family. As the film progresses, we observe the progress of her affair with Dr Le Garrec. She waits for him, to celebrate his birthday, but he never shows, actually seeming to care more for his pregnant wife Rachel (Isabelle Carré) than about her. Finally, his wife has a miscarriage and they separate. She then prepares to go with him on a romantic getaway to Florence, Italy. However, instead of meeting her at the airport, he decides to go and try 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, her scholarship, and her sanity.

Then, while watching the news one night, she learns that Dr Le Garrec has been arrested for assaulting one of his patients, Soniya Jasmin (Nathalie Krebs). She immediately leaves, murders Ms Jasmin, and rigs the evidence to look like a home invasion robbery.

Thinking that this act of selflessness will win him back, she goes to see Loïc, arriving just in time to see him arrested by the police for Soniya Jasmin's murder, and embracing his wife as he is dragged away. With her last hope shattered, Angélique returns home, turns on the gas, and lies down on the floor. Her eyes close.

However, the film pauses, and then rewinds entirely to the moment when she bought Loïc the pink rose.

This time, however, we follow the delivery boy and the events play out from the viewpoint of Dr. Loïc Le Garrec.

The viewer suddenly learns that, not only is Dr. Le Garrec not in love with Angélique, he does not even know who she is. In reality, every instance in which the two of them have been seen together has really been completely innocent. Only because the audience has been tricked into believing that they were having an affair caused the film's events to seem to be something else. Rather than being a man who is both committing adultery and mistreating his mistress, Loïc is revealed to have been a loyal and devoted husband who was being stalked by an erotomaniac. Angélique's obsession with him had grown so delusional that she deliberately ran down Mrs. Le Garrec on a borrowed moped, causing the pregnant woman to have a miscarriage.

Shortly after the failed Italian trip, a stressed out and increasingly paranoid Loïc receives a present, unmarked and with no return address. He opens it up to find a human heart impaled on an arrow. Certain that his stalker is Soniya Jasmin, a cantankerous hypocondriac, he loses control and physically attacks her, after which she indignantly presses charges for assault. After her subsequent murder, he is arrested as the prime suspect.

At his arrest, his estranged wife returns to him and acts as his defense attorney. He is ultimately cleared of suspicion. That night, however, he hears police sirens and sees an ambulance pull up to a neighbouring house, where his neighbour (the housesitting Angélique), has just tried to commit suicide. As a doctor, Loïc performs mouth to mouth resuscitation, causing Angélique regains consciousness. Later, at the hospital, her friend David (Clément Sibony), who suffers from an unrequited love for Angélique, approaches Loïc and punches him in the face, believing that he is deliberately trifling with Angélique's affections.

Loïc carefully examines all the people whom he had suspected of stalking him and considers Angélique for the first time. He vaguely remembers having greeted her after learning of his wife's pregnancy and having presented her with a pink rose from a large bouquet intended for his wife. Loïc carefully sorts through all the things that were sent to him, including a house key. That night, he impulsively tries out the key on Angélique's house, discovering that it works. Inside the house he discovers mass heaps of trash, and on the wall, a life-sized garbage mosaic of him, accompanied by the withered rose. He realizes in disgust that he has finally found his stalker.

In the climax of the film, Angélique approaches Dr. Le Garrec, and listens in shock and disbelief as he coldly tells her that they never had nor will ever have any connection at all. As he walks away, an enraged Angélique hurls a brass figurine into his skull, leaving him severely brain damaged. She is arrested, charged with the many crimes she has committed, and remanded to a mental institution.

Meanwhile, Rachel Le Garrec stands by her husband throughout intensive physical therapy as he recovers from his injuries. Mr. and Mrs. Le Garrec are later shown in a house filled with their many children as Loïc hobbles around on a cane.

Five years later, Angélique is released from the hospital. Her therapist praises her progress and tells her, "If you keep taking your medication, you will be fine."

However, as Angélique's room is cleared out, the cleaning man discovers that every single pill she should have taken has been glued to the wall in a mosaic of Loïc. Oblivious to its meaning, the cleaner merely sighs and scrapes it into the trash, as Angélique walks down the hall and into the outside world.

Trivia

* Erotomania, with which Angélique is later diagnosed, is a mental disorder which causes the sufferer to believe themselves to be involved in a non-existent romance. Often these delusions focus upon a person with a higher social position, such as a movie star or other famous icon.

External links

*imdb title|title=He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not|id=0291579
* [http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808446039 He Loves Me, He loves Me Not on Yahoo! Movies]