E-Love

Paule is pushing 50, as she repeatedly observes in her voice-over commentary. When she – a philosophy lecturer with a 10-year marriage and a 15-year-old daughter – learns that her husband is having an affair with a 28-year-old, this number takes on a special weight. The Internet site L’âme-soeur is supposed to help Paule get through her burgeoning midlife crisis. Although she doesn’t find any soulmates there, she does discover a great number of opportunities for personal rediscovery and sexual exploration. This is a tragicomedy with a clear emphasis on the second half of the word. To music by Vivaldi, the film glides blithely from one rendezvous to the next without judging what transpires, of which one can never be quite certain what is a dream, what is fantasy and what is „reality“. E-LOVE is incidentally also a homage to the two directors of the Nouvelle Vague who most frequently dealt with theme of the possibility of love. Alain Libolt’s guest appearance is a nod to Éric Rohmer’s CONTE D'AUTOMNE. And Paule’s tears at the cinema during a showing of LA PEAU DOUCE - THE SOFT SKIN (which themselves reference a third director from the circle) are not only a bow to François Truffaut but also a homage to the cinema – the place where, it would seem, Paule experiences her first real encounter. Hans-Joachim Fetzer
Faster than in real life
E-LOVE is a comedy about the romantic encounter, its mysteries, misunderstandings and sudden twists. In this case however, a very contemporary ingredient disturbs the classic plotline: that of an addictive use of Internet dating sites. For on the Net, everything goes faster than in real life, faster and faster. And, above all, things are more direct and cruder too. You click, consume and leave. The film’s plot is a simple one: Paule, a beautiful woman sure of her emotional and professional choices, finds herself alone at the approach of her fiftieth birthday, dumped in the most ordinary manner by the man she thought she would be with for life. Her sister urges her to sign up with L’âme-soeur. And, against all expectations, the heroine of E-LOVE, whose age and education seem to preclude her from accepting this way of meeting men and who is also much more romantic and sentimental than she thinks, suddenly gets caught up in the game. And so, over one summer, Paule is going to meet some very different men. Men who are too young and also far too old. Inconsolable men. Cynical men. Men clinging to their mobile phones and illusions. Men who have no more idea than she does where their lives are going. In short, terribly real men. I couldn’t imagine a trivially happy end to this story. My feeling in relation to Internet dating sites is instinctively the same as Paule’s at the start of her adventures: How can one expect to find love in a few clicks when what matters, in romantic desire, is the time, patience and dreams that you put into it? All the same, I wanted to follow Paule on this trail of men and encounters without any moral prejudice. And to my great surprise, the worst did not happen. Paule’s decline never occurred. On the contrary, she gradually transformed herself, displaying obstinacy and courage in the face of each ordeal, before finally realizing what she had become: another woman, alive with a new ardor. Anne Villacèque