3 Hearts

The love triangle in the so-so French drama 3 Hearts is an obtuse one, geometrically and romantically speaking. The madness of amour fou shapes it, giving it a slightly lopsided look. To paraphrase the self-serving observation of a well-known man once enmeshed in a similar messy situation, the heart wants what the heart wants. Translation: Someone’s bound to get hurt when one angle grows disproportionate to the others, throwing everything and everyone off balance.

Things start off innocently enough. One quiet night in a provincial town outside Paris, an overly anxious tax inspector, Marc (Poelvoorde), misses his train back home to the city. In a chance encounter, he meets a lonely young woman named Sylvie (Gainsboroug) in an empty bar. They emotionally connect – at least, that’s what we’re told; this section of the film is fairly brief and Gainsbourg’s impenetrable countenance conveys little by way of romantic feeling – as they walk and talk until dawn, when the morning train to Paris departs and the two go their separate ways. (It sounds a little like the premise of Richard Linklater’s sublime tête-á-tête Before Sunrise, no?) When a planned rendezvous in the Tuileries Garden a week later goes awry due to the contrived plot device of a panic attack, a dejected Sylvie goes to the United States with another man, one she no longer loves. The two would-be lovers do not see each other again until (once more, by chance) late one night on Skype several months later. The complicating factor in this wordless reunion? The computer happens to belong to Sylvie’s beloved sister, Sophie, who coincidentally enough has become engaged to the hapless Marc.

The premise is ripe for potent melodrama, but director Jacquot (who gets co-screenwriting credit) ultimately doesn’t finesse the situation. True, things heat up when Sylvie returns to France for the wedding – you finally see the attraction between these two star-crossed lovers, which understandably consumes them with guilt – but even with their inevitable consummation, the movie doesn’t burn with any discernible passion. Gainsbourg acquits herself reasonably well in this section of the film, though her enigmatic visage, at once both plain and pretty, is often hard to read. (For that reason, she was perfectly cast as the object of Lars von Trier’s misogynistic sexual fantasies in the deplorable Nymphomaniac films.) She and the other actors (including the still-beautiful Deneuve) should get special dispensation for the number of cigarettes they light up in this film. It’s a nicotine free-for-all. If only there were some fire in all that smoke.