Commentary – Could This Be Love?

I enjoyed being on the Host Committee for Philadelphia Cinema Alliance’s French Film Series: La Cinematheque. The series had a little press, but mainly received good houses for all 4 films through e-mails, blogs, facebook and word of mouth!

Hopefully, the series will resume next fall, and there’s an idea to do other foreign film programming throughout the year, apart from CineFest (formerly Philadelphia International Film Festival). Truthfully, I hope both companies, PCA and PFS are able to thrive in 2010 after their messy divorce is final!

The last film in the series, Could This Be Love? (Je crois que je l’aime), a romantic comedy featuring two appealingly, unattractive people; in which both the romance and the comedy fell short, proved to be very entertaining and agreeable. The romantic/comedy aspect was not lacking due to heavy or troubling scenes or dialog. It simply lacked pacing and true involvement, nothing really at stake. Yes, the two lovers were thwarted by cell phones, business deals, spying, sumo wrestlers and cat allergies; still all in all, not much took place during the film to make you really fall in love with these characters, move the film along, or feel they’ve truly fallen in love with each other.

Synopsis: Forty-three-year-old Lucas (Vincent Lindon), a rich, divorced industrialist, is irresistibly attracted to thirty-eight-year-old Elsa (Sandrine Bonnaire), a renowned ceramist whom he’s commissioned to create a fresco for his office foyer. Lucus however, is still smarting from a recent disappointment in love, so he asks Roland Christin (François Berléand), a private detective from his company, to discover the reasons why this lovely woman is still single. When the detective puts the most modern of surveillance methods into operation, the subsequent shenanigans are enormous fun to watch! [2007, France, (English Subtitles) 90 minutes, Director, Pierre Jolivet]

Personally, I feel that if a successful business mogul were pursuing me and felt he needed to check me out before laying his considerable wealth, estate and heart at my feet, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Of course, I would have to draw the line at putting a camera in my apartment. Not so much because of the invasion of privacy, but more because he’d probably change his mind, finding out that a) I’m boring b) I talk to myself way too much, but not about anything that interesting and c) 90% of my glamor and appeal disappear behind closed doors.

Food Footnote: I think Lucas would have ordered take-out pizza rather than stock up on frozen pizza after the break up. After all he could afford to splurge.

Rating: Pretty Middle Toe