BUT WHERE WERE YOU? PILAT!
Lisa (Sophie Marceau) is a filmmaker in her fifties who decides to start a new life in the United States in order to turn the page on the death of her stepmother mother who never really loved her, to flee a Paris that suffocates her and , maybe, find love again. I Love America is therefore a film about mourning, the absence of filial love, desire and female sexuality after 50 years. But above all, it is a film about Lisa Azuelos, film director in her fifties having lost his mother recently and shooting a movie in America for Amazon Prime Video in the process.
Kenneth Branagh was recently praised for his ability to withdraw from the telling of his own story in Belfast, his latest autobiographical film. Lisa Azuelos does precisely the opposite with I Love America and systematically gets in the way of his subject.
Sophie Marceau
The result is a deeply egocentric and conceited film, unable to utter anything more than mongoloid aphorisms stolen from a patchouli stoned life coach (“Dating sites make us forget our loneliness, but isn’t the real encounter with oneself?“) or jokes that would pass The Nutty Professor for du Kant (“More than 500 likes in one night I’ve never seen that, it’s a tsunabite“).
A humor so embarrassing that it borders on torture at the turn of a few projections on the modern world, confirming that in addition to its appearance of a work fantasized by a khâgneux painted with Biactol, I Love America is also the antiquated product of a hopelessly dusty mind. A kind of improbable fusion between Sex and the City badly digested and Maurice Pialat misunderstood, between comedies of sequined manners beside the plate and meta-narrative of the self pouring into the painful passion completely ignoring the rest of the world, so fascinated by his navel that his author films himself by proxy masturbating. Quite a symbol.
The dorks of love
I HATE CINEMA
But beyond the mockery generated by his frantic and ridiculous onanism, I Love America is distinguished by the vomiting feeling of abjectness that its bourgeois universe arouses elsewhere. We are often dumbfounded by the perfectly disgusting juxtaposition of Sophie Marceau’s procrastination and her sexual adventures multiplying the outward signs of wealth. Let’s be clear: rich or poor, losing a parent is a difficult ordeal and growing up in a loveless home is no laughing matter. But the empathetic experience is seriously hampered by the world of I Love America, where the worst thing that can happen in a day is Nestor the valet breaking a Ferrari headlight. Yes N. Yes N. Yes N.
It could have been a subject, the starting point of a satire, but no. I Love America is a movie so nonchalantly bling-bling that it doesn’t even realize its imagery is interfering with its narrative. Witness this intimate flashback scene: Lisa, as a child, tries on a pair of shoes belonging to her mother. Elegant tall lady’s shoes, far too wide for her little feet to fill them. Above this symbol, simple but effective: a huge YSL logo, filmed in close-up. For some people, it’s stronger than anything: even in emotional moments, you have to remember where you come from, especially when you’re lucky enough to be one of those people for whom money doesn’t matter. happiness.
Misery is less painful in the sun, especially when you are shielded
I Love America never realizes he’s puking luxury and class contempt, that he screams in every photogram “I have money and I fuck”. It’s stronger than him, almost a narcissistic reflex. It is with a rare mortuary that we hear, for example, the character of Sophie Marceau complaining about Paris, the strikes, the rain, the bad mood of the people and being satisfied to have gone to a villa with a swimming pool in Los Angeles. Such an obvious and effective solution when you think about it! We even come up with an idea of optimization for the next trip: a one-way trip straight to the Sun. Everyone will be happy and it’s warmer there than the west of Paris.
I Love America is available on Amazon Prime Video in France since March 11, 2022
–
