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THREE HEARTS Send This Review to a Friend
The story and the performances by two star actresses command one’s interest in “Three Hearts,” a French film directed by Benoît Jacquot, who wrote it with Julien Boivent, and now released after being showcased at the recent Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series. But can one believe much of it? The direction is in good hands, but the set-up and tempestuous outcome strain credibility.
Benoît Poelvoorde plays Marc, a dull tax inspector given to anxiety attacks. One night while in the town Valence he encounters Sylvie, played by the popular actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, and insinuates himself into her life. So far OK. They have the hots for each other and he presses her to met him at an appointed time and place in Paris. Sylvie, who is married to a husband working in the United States, packs her bag and decides to take the plunge.
But a heart incident that sends Marc to the hospital delays him and he arrives after she has been waiting and waiting, finally giving up. (Shades of “An Affair to Remember.”) Sylvie, who is married, takes off to meet her husband in America.
Marc subsequently meets and falls in love with Sylvie’s sister, Sophie, played by the gorgeous Chiara Mastroianni, whom I can never look at without seeing the likeness to her late father Marcello. The screenplay keeps Marc from learning immediately that Sophie and Sylvie are sisters. (Their mother, played by the ever-interesting Catherine Deneuve, is a mostly decorative character.) Likewise, Sylvie doesn’t know that Sophie’s husband-to-be is Marc, and Sophie doesn’t know of his fling with Sylvie. There is the critical wedding scene, and the screenplay teases as to when the moment of all-around recognition will come, as Sylvie can be expected to turn up for the big event.
Since the meeting with Sylvie was so fleeting and Marc and Sophie have developed a loving relationship, the rational thing to do would have been for Marc to tell Sophie of the brief attraction to her sister and the now-discovered coincidence. But there would have been no further plot. Instead there are a barrage of issues: What will happen to the closeness between the sisters? Will Marc give up his new life to chase a once-stirred passion? And would Sylvie betray her sister by running off with Marc?
The French-style fixation on infidelity is undermined by the lack of appeal to be found in Poelvoorde as the leading man Marc. What would either of these women see in him? Also, to this reviewer at least, Mastroianni is so much more attractive than Gainsbourg, as sexy as she tries to be. The entire plot comes across as a contrivance. But to the director’s credit, the film keeps up interest even as one might tear it apart with logic and resistance to coincidence and manipulation. A Cohen Media Group release. Reviewed March 13, 2015.
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