How Much Do You Love Me?

All French movies are about the loneliness of the male and his self-prescribed antidote for the malaise, lots of sex. Well at least that’s the impression one gets from our Antipodean perspective. Gallic films seem to be all more-or-less variations on the story of some bourgeois wannabe mec and his walk on the wild side of life. A way-sexy femme fatale in black stockings is, of course, obligatory to this peregrination. Blier’s film adheres to the basic scenario, although mercifully, being Blier, he’s ready to play with it in a knowing way. Whether he’s just playing with himself, however, is the question and a good many people will answer affirmatively, for although the film has its delightful moments, it has more through which it drags.

Blier is an institution in French cinema and a specialist in the black sex comedy. Over the years his films have tended to acquire much more of a theatrical style and this is certainly true of his latest offering, with its obviously artificial sets and limited exterior scenes and straight-on camera. So it's best to consider this more as a piece of filmed theatre than cinema per se. Blier’s script is at times on the money, but one gets the impression (and this is by no means atypical of the director’s later output) that it was a good idea insufficiently developed and particularly in the latter stages, once Depardieu arrives on stage, tickling it up with farcicalities and operatic music does nothing to replace the void left by the lack of emotionally-engaging substance.

The cast for the most part do a good job with what they are given. Bernard Campan is well-cast as the diffident office-worker who tries an unusual gambit for love. Monica Bellucci, who is stacked like a 50s pin-up with more curves than a Grand Prix track, a kind of Mediterranean Anita Eckberg, is suprisingly good as the whore he takes home and Jean-Pierre Darroussin makes an amusing appearance as his melancholy friend. Long-time Blier collaborator, Gérard Depardieu, is however wasted as a soi-disant hard-ass gangster, and seems to be in the film largely for his marquee status.

FYI: The film appears to be shot with a very shallow focal depth, the result being that only a slight difference in distance from the camera causes objects, including faces, to be more-or-less out of focus compared to their close neighbours. Although it is difficult to believe this intentional, with an auteur like Blier, who knows?

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