MOVIE REVIEW: 3 Hearts

Catherine Deneuve (Madame Berger) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Sylvie).

Catherine Deneuve (Madame Berger) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (Sylvie).

Published May 29, 2015

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3 COEURS (3 HEARTS)

DIRECTOR: Benoît Jacquot

CAST: Benoît Poelvoorde, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni

CLASSIFICATION: 13 S

RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes

RATING: ***

The gently perfumed air of impending doom suffuses 3 Hearts, a tasteful, mildly intriguing romantic drama from writer-director Benoît Jacquot. In subject matter, this atmospheric bagatelle is the stuff of either melodrama or screwball comedy, with its twists, turns, coincidences and domestic disasters. Depending on the film-maker’s mood, each could be open to either tragic or hilarious spin. Jacquot unquestionably goes for the former, adding a tense, menacing tone that gives an already sombre morality tale the taut dynamics of a thriller.

3 Hearts opens as Marc (Poelvoorde), a rumpled tax inspector, just misses his train back to Paris from an unnamed provincial town. He repairs to a cafe, where he spies Sylvie (Gainsbourg). Later, on the street, he bumps into her again, and they spend the night talking, vowing to meet a week later in Paris.

Fans of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise cycle might think they know how this ends. But Jacquot – who collaborated on the script with Julien Boivent – takes 3 Hearts in a decidedly less lyrical direction, sending Marc and Sylvie down unexpected paths that will result either in blissful true love or thwarted desire. Adding complications to the mix are Sylvie’s mother and sister, played by real-life mother and daughter Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni, who play increasingly significant roles in a story that, while well-executed, ultimately amounts to little more than a minor diversion.

There’s no doubt that Jacquot knows his way around a world in which smoking, longing looks over wine glasses and furtive, shadowy kisses take the place of dialogue. If he doesn’t always close the circle on some of his foreshadowings and subplots, he manages to hold the viewer’s interest, heightened by Hans Zimmer-esque “thromps” of foreboding minor-key chords.

Poelvoorde isn’t entirely convincing as a man with whom women instantly fall in love, but all three actresses in 3 Hearts are believable as people hurtling toward Jacquot’s downbeat conclusion: let’s just say that everything in the title winds up broken.

The Washington Post

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