Another hooker movie: “Combien tu m’aimes?”

I watched this one for a second time on streaming Netflix last night. It's irresistible; a 2005 French film, "How Much Do You Love Me?" If the color, the light, the ambience, and the music in the opening scene doesn't completely captivate you then you don't have a pulse. It's essentially a comic farce with heart, satirizing elements of 70's French "art films" and spoofing Ingmar Bergman's existential Swedish dialogues from the 60's. Does the director know he's doing that? I don't know, but he's old enough.

Francois is a boring French office worker who one night walks into a hooker bar and meets Daniella (Italian actress, Monica Belluci.) He offers her the proceeds of the lottery he has just won if she will live with him. She accepts knowing she'll eventually have to deal with her gangster pimp, Charly (Gerard Depardieu.)

As with most "hooker movies," it's a man's fantasy, wanting it all in one woman (good girl/bad girl, devil and angel.) The women seem want to give the same. Ahh, what fools we men are! And, "fools rush in where....." Well, you know.

It's one of the most forgiving films of human frailty I have seen. Everyone looking for love in whatever misguided way seems to find it in some measure. The musical soundtrack is sensational alternating between musky saxophone jazz and Puccini arias... the arias punctuating the farce.

The finale, a party scene worth the whole movie, recalls Woody Allen's comic Greek chorus finale in Mighty Aphrodite, an "I'm OK, you're OK" song and dance. It expresses what I'm finding to be the burgeoning theme of this blog: We are all voyagers on a "Ship of Fools." Be tolerant of each other and hug your neighbor.