“I love America”: California by Sophie Marceau

Lisa is in her fifties. The children are grown, his mother has just died. French filmmaker, she moved to Los Angeles, the city of her dreams, with no other project than to rebuild her life or at least to open a parenthesis. Curious emigrant who has the means to rent a villa with a swimming pool while toasting the most painful (and interesting) stages of the American dream.

The material comfort of the heroine marks the limits of a romantic comedy without rebound, stakes or reversal of fortune. In America, Lisa devotes a good part of her time to doing yoga and discovering the world of online dating. The gags are mainly related to the men she catches in the nets of her application, including an unpayable nudist who will offer his best scene in “I love America”.

Sophie Marceau plays here the double of her director Lisa Azuelos. “I love America” ​​writes in flashback the golden and dilapidated childhood of the daughter of Marie Laforêt. As much as an American adventure, this film tells of a youth lived in the shadow of a famous mother, ghost and vampire, absent and devouring. Memories marked by early nights in the discotheque and the appearance of naked models in the paternal kitchen at breakfast…

It sometimes feels like being in a novel by Beigbeder or in the draft of the biopic of Dalida that Azuelos will shoot in 2016. These disco years seen by a little girl might have deserved an entire film. Here the flashbacks seem to hatch the Californian narrative instead of enriching it.

The Marceau mirror

“I love America” is however seen without displeasure by love for a decidedly singular actress. Of course, in each film, Sophie Marceau plays a different heroine. But his roles also write the saga of his own character. In the 1980s, Claude Pinoteau filmed him at the college of “La Boum” (1980) then at the university of “Etudiante” (1988). In 2009, Lisa Azuelos took over.

In “LOL”, Sophie Marceau was a divorced mother confronted with her daughter’s adolescence. New episode of the saga, “I love America” ​​responds to “Pacific Palisades”, a lesser known film by Bernard Schmitt (1990) where Sophie played a young French girl in search of the American dream and a Californian cowboy.

Three decades later, the actress is not afraid of nude shots and wears her body with disarming confidence. Like François Ozon in “Everything went well”, Lisa Azuelos films her eyes which no longer see very clearly. It is not easy for anyone to welcome the years. Through films good and bad, Sophie shows us the way.

For Lisa Azuelos, for all of us, it sounds like a Velvet Underground song: ” I will be your mirror, I will reflect what you are, in case you don’t know. I’ll be the wind, the rain, the twilight, the light at your doorstep that will show you your home “. Thus, by our side, ages Sophie Marceau.