3 Hearts (2014)

3 HEARTS  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Benoit Jacquot
    Benoit Poelvoorde, Charlotte Gainsbourg,
    Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve
It's late at night and a middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit has just missed the last train back to Paris. The man looks tired and desperate and lost. He crosses the street to a cafe that's about to close and orders a bottle of mineral water. A woman comes in to buy a pack of cigarettes. The man follows her out the door and down the sidewalk, catching up with her and starting a conversation. This is exactly the kind of guy a woman alone on the street late at night would get away from fast. But she doesn't and the two of them end up talking and smoking the night away, walking the city streets. In the morning she sees him off on the train and they agree to meet up Friday afternoon at five o'clock by the fountain in the Tulieres Garden. On Friday afternoon, the woman shows up but the man doesn't. Which doesn't quite add up, either, because the woman is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and it's hard to imagine any straight guy with a measurable pulse failing to show up for a date with Charlotte Gainsbourg in the Tulieres Garden on Friday afternoon. Well, okay, the man's had a heart attack, but still. That missed connection will have profound consequences for the man, the woman and the woman's sister, who the man will soon meet and marry. The story's full of irrational choices, implausible occurrences and unlikely coincidences. And even in a French movie, the notion that these two classy women would both fall head over heels for this shabby, sketchy guy defies belief. With Chiara Mastroianni playing Gainsbourg's sister and Catherine Deneuve playing their mother, the movie's not hard to look at. You just wish it made more sense.