Plot
Max is on his way to Tokyo. He lives in Paris and likes to flirt but has decided to get married. By chance...
Release Year: 1996
Rating: 7.6/10 (6,975 voted)
Director:
Gilles Mimouni
Stars: Romane Bohringer, Vincent Cassel, Jean-Philippe Écoffey
Storyline Max is on his way to Tokyo. He lives in Paris and likes to flirt but has decided to get married. By chance, he seems to have seen Lisa, his greatest love, in a cafe. Max forgets everything, his trip to Tokyo and his fiance. Obsessed with meeting Lisa he finds out where she lives and hides in the apartment. However, a different girl, called Alice, finds Max in the flat. Alice looks quite similar to Lisa, and they have sex. To complicate matters further, Alice is also the girlfriend of Max's buddy Lucien and Lisa is followed by an older man.
Cast: Romane Bohringer
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Alice
Vincent Cassel
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Max Mayer
Jean-Philippe Écoffey
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Lucien
Monica Bellucci
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Lisa
Sandrine Kiberlain
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Muriel
Olivier Granier
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Daniel
Paul Pavel
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Jeweller
Nelly Alard
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Madeleine
Bruno Leonelli
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Alain Beccaria
Tateo Isaizaki
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Japanese Businessman
Tsuyu Shimizu
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Japanese Interpreter
Ricardo Mateo
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Cafe Waiter
Vincent Nemeth
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Barman
Bruno Fernández Vella
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Video Technician
Juan Carlos Martín Alonso
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Video Technician
Release Date: 27 July 1996
Filming Locations: Estudios Los Angeles, Madrid, Spain
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The play that features Lisa and Alice is 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' by William Shakespeare.
Quotes: Lisa:
Do you often stalk people?
User Review
Formidable!
Rating: 10/10
This is an astonishing film: a romantic thriller with a convoluted but
perfectly constructed and devastatingly symmetrical plot, brilliantly
buttressed by the use of recurring visual motifs. Everything in it is
beautifully filmed: the women, the apartments; but more amazing is the
devastating juxtapositioning of images, almost every scene has echoes of
another. This is a story told in light, in colour, in many
almost-parallels. Every time I watch it, it fills me with
delight.
The acting is great too. Romane Bohringer is stunning as a woman on the
verge of a nervous breakdown: everything about her changes with her mood.
Vincent Cassel plays a very different role to his part in La Haine; but no
less excellently: shifty and sympathetic at the same time. And Monica
Bellucci - ah!, Monica Bellucci, well, put simply, she plays (is?) the
world's most perfect woman. There's one small scene about three quarters of
the way through where she does nothing more than smile; yet in that instant,
says more than hours of Hollywood junk.
One cannot do justice to this film without at least mentioning the superb,
sequential climax: sad, shocking, ironic and subtle in turn. But if one
moment captures the brilliance of this work, it's the scene at the start of
this fabulous denouement, the prospect of which has been teasingly laid
before us throughout the entire story. Yet when the moment comes, it is
handled so delicately, so briefly, so deftly, that on reflection it makes
you gasp. Only a director of staggering confidence would dare to underplay
this vital point. But the confidence is justified. Cinema doesn't come
much better than this.
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