Victoria Weisfeld I must have watched a French comedy and put the titles of all the films previewed on my Netflix list, because they keep coming. Bienvenue! This 2010 film from France is the latest—a pleasant farce directed by Michel Leclerc and written by him and Baya Kasmi. It won three César Awards in 2011, including for best writing. The story is about a young woman who uses sex as a weapon to persuade conservative politicians—men whom she considers "right-wing" in general—to embrace more liberal attitudes. From this comes some satirical moments, too, touching on the impermanence of supposed firmly held beliefs and the pitfalls of stereotyping ethnic and religious groups based simply on how they look or what their names are. Half-Algerian, the young woman's name is Baya Benmahmoud,and she says, "no one in France has that name." But she tackles one person too many when she confronts Arthur Martin—"15,207 people in France have the same name," he tells us—a middle-aged scientist who does necropsies on dead birds, in order to detect possible human illnesses. Why are you scaring people? she demands to know at their first confrontational meeting. The free spirit and the buttoned-up scientist are, of course, destined to fall for each other. The filmmakers show us how the two protagonists do not escape their childhoods, and we see them as children, as children commenting on their adult selves, and the fireworks when their polar opposite families, alas, meet. In his New York Times review, Stephen Holden says the movie "has the tone and structure of early-to-middle Woody Allen,but infused with a dose of Gallic identity politics." Sara Forestier is charming as the irrepressible extrovert Baya (she also snagged a César), and Jacques Gamblin is a persuasive match. A fun movie when you just want to be happily entertained (note: nudity)

is24 Hysterically funny! I was laughing out loud. Sara Forestier is a revelation. Her extroverted character ridicules the prejudice, history, culture and human personalities so smoothly, it makes it impossible to stay indifferent.The free spirit is teaching the locked ones about the world and life. 10 stars for a fabulous script and acting. Intelligent and entertaining. With so much darkness and negativity in the world this casts a liberating candlelight against the cites of the political figures that have shaped the history.I highly recommend this movie!

sfdphd I just saw this film and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's difficult to create a sexy laugh-out-loud comedy with quirky characters who fall in love that also intelligently and subtly considers complicated political differences on volatile subjects such as Jews, Arabs, Muslims, immigration, animal cruelty, bird flu, sexual abuse, fascists, and the Holocaust. I know it sounds like a bizarre combination but once you see the film, you will understand and appreciate the pleasure of it. It's quite an achievement that the filmmakers were able to maintain the hilarity and high level of political discourse all the way through while adding poignant elements to the story as well. Bravo to all involved, I was quite impressed.The only other film I can think of that can be compared to this is the Billy Wilder film One, Two, Three that's set in Berlin during the Cold War and has a capitalist and a communist falling in love with the help of the girl's reluctant guardian, a Coca Cola executive who pretends the communist is the son of an Old World aristocrat so the girl's parents don't freak out.But the Wilder film is more of a broad farce and doesn't have any poignancy to it. The Names of Love is much sweeter and more authentic in a real life way, which is more difficult to do well.

bezoar211 (Minor spoilers.) The premise of this movie is a romance between a self-proclaimed left-wing "political whore" and a (left-leaning, but not overtly political) veterinarian. Both are the children of a native French citizen and a member of a historically maligned group (Baya is half-Algerian, Arthur half-Jewish). But instead of engaging in some awful, weepy remembrance tearjerker, this movie gives its audience some credit and handles the expected poignance with humor and aplomb. Yes, the characters have secrets and conflicts which they've circumvented throughout their lives, but the specifics are irrelevant and--appropriately--elided. Rather, this is an attempt to examine how people deal with their heritage and personal lives while trying to reconcile their reactions with their beliefs--and what they feel their beliefs _ought_ to be.Moreover, while the full complexity of the characters' struggles is shown, it is always with a subtlety that keeps the movie grounded. The conversion of ancestral suffering into a cachet, to be readily exploited for the social needs of youth; the feelings of inadequacy in the presence of our parents, whose enormous ordeals seem to render our own difficulties trivial; the mental prisons we build for ourselves in order to establish emotional security; all of these intricate webs of social determinants and individual aspirations are depicted with just the right balance of sympathy and objectivity.So there is actual substance here. But what is truly remarkable is that Leclerc's use of po-mo tropes (like protagonists directly addressing the camera or characters interacting with their former selves) never feels stilted or laborious, and in fact entails a seamless fusion of form and content.