E-Love

"I am Paule Zachmann (Anne Consigny)"  almost 50, philosophy teacher in Paris, an off screen voice announces as we are shown the heroine. This is how the film begins and from time to time the phrase is repeated in various episodes in which she begins to feel unsure of herself. She is married with a 14-year-old daughter (Rebecca Marder) . This is how it ends. In between, she tells her story of how it is that she feels more and more distant from her husband  Alex (Antoine Cahppey) but is otherwise quite happy with her family and professional life, until she discovers to her surprise that Alex  is dating a much younger lady, whom he says he finds on Soulmate.com. They then separate for a while.

In the interval of this mid-life crisis,when her teenage daughter was out on a camp and through the active goading by her lesbian sister, who types in her personal details for her into Antigone.com, an internet site to help people find suitable mates, she begins to try them out, one by one although all the while one of her male colleagues is trying desperately to go out with her for a coffee or movie.

The story is about her different encounters, told from her point of view, with those who simply want sex e.g a North African lover Mounir (Kamoun), those looking for marriage or other more permanent liaison; some rather brash and direct, others more subtle Opale (Carlo Brandt); some with brains, others have little and some with rather more refined taste and sensitivity, like a somewhat narcisstic psychanalyst Olivier (Sege Renko). She is supposed to have responded to some 20 and went out with four or five with some of whom she had great sex. 

Since the script, based on a novel by Dominique Baqué, is so heavily dependent on the acting of Anne Consigny (Wild Grass, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Not Here To Be Loved) , its success and failure rests on how she acts out her role. She turns in an excellent performance as the slightly edgy, initially timid,  and later more sexually relaxed and elegant and witty middle-class perfect housewife, always attentive to the reactions of her mates and not completely above having a few sexual fantasies of her own.  As the film ends, we see Paule emerging from a screening of a Francois Truffaut's film, her eyes moist. Is the director suggesting something? If so, what?

The screenpla, co-written by director Anne Villacèque with Sophie Fillières, is completely middle class and does not seem to give us much insight into human relationships but it is a nice, unsentimental and humorous look at the comedy of E-dating. The photography is competent but nothing to rave about. But it's an excellent and entertaining way of whiling away an hour at the cinema. I'd give it a 2B minus.