Taglines: Is she crazy in love, or just crazy?
He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not. 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). She is a successful art student. In between creating her art projects, she works part-time at a cafe and house-sits for a wealthy vacationing family. Her friend David (Clément Sibony) disapproves of her affair with Loïc, who is married, but she 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 throws Angélique into a self-destructive cycle of clinical depression, 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 and, in the ensuing scuffle, Sonia has a heart attack and dies. Thinking this will win Loïc back, Angélique steals from the house to make it look like a robbery. Instead, Loïc is arrested for Sonia’s murder. Angélique, after witnessing Loïc embrace his wife as he is dragged away, returns home, turns on the gas oven, and lies down on the floor to die.
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 Loïc’s viewpoint. Loïc receives the pink rose and assumes that his wife sent it to him. It is revealed that Loïc barely knows Angélique and that they cross paths only because Angélique is house-sitting for Loïc and Rachel’s neighbor.
Loïc receives Angélique’s gifts and messages, but doesn’t know 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 having suffered an “accident” that ruined her friend’s moped and injured her arm. Loïc comes to believe that his stalker is Sonia; he physically attacks her and she presses charges for assault. After she 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 sees an ambulance pull up to his neighbor’s house. Angélique has just tried to commit suicide. As a doctor, he performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which causes her to regain consciousness. Now aware of her, he considers the possibility that she is his stalker. Exploring the house that she was house-sitting, he finds a life-sized garbage mosaic of himself.
Loïc and Angélique have a final confrontation, in which he declares that they never had, nor ever will have, a relationship. Angélique strikes him over the head with a brass figurine and he falls down the stairs. Angélique is arrested, diagnosed with erotomania, and remanded to a mental institution. Rachel stands by her husband while he recovers from his injuries, and several years later the couple are shown at a house with their young children as Loïc hobbles around with a cane.
He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (French: À la Folie… Pas du Tout) is a 2002 French psychological drama film directed by Laetitia Colombani. The film focuses on a Fine Arts student, 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.
In a 2003 BBC interview, 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.”
In France, the film had 580,084 entrées (tickets sold); by comparison, Tautou’s 2001 film Amélie, one of France’s most successful films at the box office, sold 8,635,307 tickets. The film, given a limited release to 23 North American movie theaters, grossed $1,011,102 during its theatrical run.
The film was 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.
He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (2003)
Directed by: Laetitia Colombani
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Samuel Le Bihan, Isabelle Carre, Clement Sibony, Sophie Guillemin, Eric Savin, Michele Garay, Nathalie Krebs, Juliette Desseaux, Sophie Vaslot
Screenplay by: Laetitia Colombani, Caroline Thivel
Production Design by: Jean-Marc Kerdelhue
Cinematography by: Pierre Aïm
Film Editing by: Véronique Parnet
Costume Design by: Jacqueline Bouchard
Set Decoration by: Odile Hubert
Art Direction by: Cécile Arlet Colin
Music by: Jérôme Coullet
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and some obsessive behavior.
Distributed by: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Release Date: February 14, 2003
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