Film Description
| DEUX JOURS A TUER (LOVE ME NO MORE) | ||
| Director: | Jean Becker |  |
| Country: | France | |
| Year: | 2008 | |
| Language: | French with English subtitles | |
| Runtime: | 85 minutes | |
| Rating: | PG | |
| Principal Cast: | Albert Dupontel, Marie-Josee Croze, Pierre Vaneck, Alessandra Martines, Cristiana Reali, Mathias Mlekus, Claire Nebout, Francois Marthouret, Anne Loiret, Jose Paul. | |
| Trailer: | View the trailer for this film | |
| SCREENING TIMES | |||
| Tuesday, November 11 | 7:00 PM | L'Essor | |
After the mostly warm and fuzzy dramedy "Conversations With My Gardener," Gallic helmer Jean Becker explores cold and nasty in "Love Me No More," a misanthropic drama about an adman who starts telling his friends and family what he really thinks of them.
During a meeting with a client, 42-year-old Paris-based ad exec Antoine (Albert Dupontel, trading on his rough-diamond persona) starts unexpectedly abusing both the product and the client. Advised to take some time off, Antoine goes one step further and quits the company, which he co-owns. He storms out to have lunch with an attractive woman who may or may not be his mistress -- the one person in the film he doesn't verbally abuse.
Since this day happens to be his birthday, it's suggested that Antoine is having a massive midlife crisis, but he seems hellbent on inducing a crisis in everyone else around him, whatever their age. He tells his wife Cecile (Marie-Josee Croze) that he doesn't love her and never has. Then, one by one, he insults all his closest friends at the surprise party Cecile's organized, ridiculing their hypocrisy and champagne-socialist lifestyles. He even rips into his young children for spelling mistakes on their birthday cards.
His work seemingly done in France, Antoine sets off on a road trip that eventually leads to Ireland. Here, he meets up with his father (Pierre Vaneck), a loner, not unlike Antoine, who's never met his grandchildren. Audiences well-versed in the rules of melodrama will think the rocky relationship with dad is the root of Antoine's problems. However, a further twist is in store.
Antoine's caustic put-downs are often witty, and lacerate certain middle-class pretensions with cruel accuracy; the film could almost play as a comedy if the nastiness weren't so total. The twist, when it comes, will hardly let Antoine off the hook for many audiences, who may be left feeling he's an even bigger monster than he initially seemed.
Leslie Felperin - Variety
