Love of the Paranoid Man

Closing the 14th French Cinema Festival in Jakarta, a comedy about love and suspicion.

lucas (Vincent Lindon) is a 43 year old entrepreneur, a very well established one. One day, passing through the lobby of his office he met Elsa (Sandrin Bonnaire), an fresco artist commissioned to make the fresco tiles on the floor of the lobby. For Lucas, it was love at first sight.

Unfortunately Lucas has a weird habit of sending a private investigator, Roland Christin (Francois Berleand) to spy on anyone close to him. He does this out of suspicion. Several years before, he was broken hearted because the woman he loved turned out to be a competitor’s spy.

Being loved, doesn’t mean that Elsa could escape Lucas’ odd ways. Lucas still sent Roland to find out about her habits, her favorite food, and Elsa’s past lovers. A series of hilarious incident happened because of Lucas’ paranoia. One night he failed to make love in Elsa’s apartment, because Roland told him that he had planned camera all over the apartment.

The love story encounters many obstacles. One night Elsa went to Lucas’ apartment but had to leave immediately because she’s allergic to cats, and Lucas kept one as a pet.

Elsa eventually found out that Lucas had sent a private investigator to spy on her. She was enraged. “ What you’ve done destroys my privacy!” Although Lucas tried to explain Elsa refused. Will this love story have a happy ending?

Je Crois que Je L’aime is one of the movies played in the French Cinema Festival that took place from April 17 until May 10, 2009. This year’s festival took celebration of love and comedy as its main theme. This is the fourteenth time the festival took place, twenty French films were considered suitable with the main theme.

This festival has its own minuses. (Self) censorship among other things, when playing Je Crois que Je L’aime, for instance, the projectionist closed the projector for several scenes considered unsuitable to be watch by the audience in Indonesia, while the scenes actually was an important part of the movie, since it is the anticlimax that explained what eventually happened between Elsa and Lucas. Maybe this is the way for the promoter to respect the Indonesian culture, but for many viewers this is quite annoying.