Title: Pas son genre (Not my type)
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Starring: Emilie Dequenne and Loic Corbery.
The French-Belgian romantic film, that screened at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, blends trivia and philosophy using the cornerstone theorem that opposites attract.
When a handsome young Parisian philosophy professor Clément (Loïc Corbery, of the Comédie-Française) is transferred to the northern French town of Arras, his world is turned upside down. He dislikes the provincial life, far from the wonders of Paris. Clément lives in a hotel without emotional, intellectual or physical stimulation, until he meets Jennifer (Émilie Dequenne), a sweet-natured and brassy blond coiffeuse from a local hair salon. On the surface, Clément and Jennifer have nothing in common. She is a single mother who reads tabloid magazines and has a weekly karaoke date with her girlfriends; he reads Proust and attends gallery openings. The chemistry between them builds up, as Clément gradually plays Pygmalion and Jennifer teaches him to let his hair down. But director Lucas Belvaux leads us to question whether the chemistry between them will suffice to break down the self-made and socially constructed barriers that keep them apart.
This delicate contemporary fairytale captures effectively the passionate approach of Venusians to love, as opposed to the more supercilious one adopted by Martians. Women come from Venus and men come from Mars, but in this case what makes it even trickier is the complete lack of common passions betwixt the two. If Goethe attributed the rules of attraction to simple chemistry in his ‘Die Wahlverwandtschaften’ Clément and Jennifer would seem the perfect match, capable of making Jennifer Anniston’s ditzy characters weld with Emmanuel Kant’s erudite reflections. But theirs is not the kind of love based on profound elective affinity, that triggers to make plans for the future with someone who shares your passions. Thus, this seems to jeopardise the togetherness of the two protagonists. And their doubts are sure to haunt your approach to romance. While leaving the movie theatre you’ll find yourself asking: is there only one type of love?
Technical: B+
Acting: A+
Story: B
Overall: B+
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
