Movies - He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not

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	Movies - He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not

He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (Original French: À la folie... pas du tout) is a 2002 film starring Audrey Tautou).

The film opens with Angelique, a young Parisian art student, buying a single pink rose for her lover, Dr. Le Garrec, a successful cardiologist. She asks for the rose to be delivered to his office, and both she and the messenger leave the shop and depart in opposite directions.

Angelique seems a relatively normal girl. She is a successful art student, having just won a scholarship and grant, she has a part time job at a cafe, helps her friend look after her little sister, and house sitting for another. As the film progresses, we discover her affair with Dr Le. Garrec, and yet, something seems wrong. Although she waits for him, to celebrate his birthday, he never shows, and actually seems to care more about his pregnant wife than about her. Finally, she gets wind that his wife has had a miscarriage and that they have separated, and prepares to go with him on a trip to Florence. However, instead of showing up, he decides to go and see his wife. This is the last straw for Angelique and she is thrown into a self-destructive cycle of depression, losing her job, her scholarship, and herself. Then, while watching the news one night, she hears that Dr. Le Garrec has been arrested for assaulting one of his patients, and goes out in the middle of the night, tracks down Sophia Jasmin, the complainant, and kills her. But don't worry, she fixed the scene to make it look like a robbery.

Thinking that this act of selflessness will win him back, she goes to see him, and arrives just in time to see him being arrested by the police for Sophia Jasmin's murder, and embracing his wife as he is dragged away. This finally blows it for Angelique and she goes home, turns on the gas, and lies down. We see her eyes close, and it seems that it's all over for her.

However, the film briefly pauses, and then starts to play in reverse. She opens her eyes, gets up, turns off the gas, and the film rewinds entirely to the very first scene where she buys him that first single pink rose.

From here, we again see her and the messenger leave simultaneously, and go their separate ways. But this time, rather than following Angelique, we follow the messenger and the film plays itself out again from the point of view of Dr. Loic Le Garrec.

As his side of the story develops, we begin to learn that, not only does Dr. Le Garrec not care about Angelique, he does not actually know who she is. In fact, every instance where you see the two of them together is completely innocent, and it's only because we think that they are having an affair that these chance meetings seem to be something else. Rather than Loic being a man who is not only cheating on his wife, but also mistreating the girl with whom he is having an affair, we see him now as a good, loyal and loving husband who is being stalked by an erotomaniac. (A mental disorder where someone believes themself to be in a relationship that does not in actual fact exist, often with people in higher stations than their own, usually moviestars and other famous icons). Her obsession with him goes to such an extent that we find out that she is the one who causes his wife's miscarriage.

As Loic is getting to his wit's end, (which happens to occur just after he has "not turned up" to the Florence trip", he receives a present, unmarked and unnamed. He opens it up, to find a human heart with an arrow through it. Believing that this stalker is Sophia Jasmin, he loses control and attacks her, resulting in his arrest.

At the conclusion of the film, Angelique approaches Dr. Le Garrec, still hoping that he will take her as his one true love. When she is refused, she beats him over the head, and arrested for attempted murder, and committed to a mental institution for her erotomania. The film ends with her leaving the mental hospital, allegedly cured, and with a warning to continue taking her medication, the only thing really stopping her obsession with Dr Le Garrec. However, as she leaves, and her room is cleared out, a cleaner discovers that every single pill she should have taken over the last five years has been attached to the wall in a mosaic of Loic. Oblivious to what this discovery signifies, the cleaner merely sighs and removes it, as Angelique walks down the hall out of the asylum and disappears...

The game

"He (She) Loves Me, He (She) Loves Me Not" is also the name of a game in which one person (often a child) seeks to determine whether the object of his or her affection returns that affection or not. It is often spoken while plucking the petals of a flower (especially a daisy) one by one, with the last petal giving the "answer" to whether he or she loves you. It is therefore dependent on whether the flower has an even or odd number of petals. This method is arguably less reliable than, say, a Magic 8-ball, since all flowers of a certain kind will usually give the same answer. It is traditionally performed by a person infatuated with another, and actually seeking to reaffirm a pre-existing belief. It is doubtful that anyone other than a child could take the answer seriously (in fiction, if taken seriously, it is usually a source of humor).

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