I Love America

Seemingly ageless French icon Sophie Marceau plays a woman who after raising two daughters looks for a fresh start in the US. As she's a movie director in her home country she chooses LA and Hollywood as her destination. Lisa also has a close friend there.

She wants to experience the places she's seen in her favorite movies and maybe relive some of the stories portrayed there.

You may have noticed by now that this is a semi-autobiographical movie depicting the life of the director of this very film.

So you won't be surprised that it's not just the typical Hollywood romcom made after a checklist from the studio. Indeed it seems to be combining the French way of making movies with some of the Hollywood standards.

Yes, we have some typical ingredients like the supportive gay friend and the obnoxious dates meant to make us cringe.

Yet almost at the beginning we get a u-turn where Lisa has to literally revisit her deeply troubled relationship with her parents. So we witness her reluctantly dealing with her childhood trauma both in the current time frame and in flashbacks.

This can be rather depressing, sad and triggering at times but when we wade through the difficult emotions with our protagonist we can also enjoy the shiny and (not always) happy encounters throughout the movie.

The somber undertone makes this movie less of a comedy. It's rather a fresh and uninhibited look at modern relationships. So if you're in it just for cheap laughs you might be disappointed.

We have some of the bizarre downsides of (online) dating here but they are shown in a realistic way so they are not really laughable due to their somewhat ridiculous nature. These are rather WTF moments.

Also if you don't like gay people being shown cross-dressing and kissing you will probably hate it.

I blame homophobia for the surprisingly low reviews. Apparently some "American patriots" were drawn in by the title just to realize that it is the open minded America people from outside the US love. If you hate truly American values like freedom of expression don't watch this.

If you are a healthy heterosexual man (like I am) - sorry for the outing - you may want to watch the movie just to see the lead's breasts! They are incredible. How on earth do they look so beautiful at that age without looking fake at all? I hope this is not just about CGI special effects.

Given that I Love America is just an Amazon Prime production and rather low budget compared to full-fledged Hollywood movies I was pleasantly surprised by the depth, uplifting message and overall enthusiasm of this little film.

The main drawback is that it's basically two films at once, one about dealing with childhood trauma and one about navigating the often strange realm of dating and (the lack of) relationships these days.

I had the impression that the movie was jumping back and forth all the time.

Each time you relaxed a bit there was another blast from the past. So I can't give "I Love America" a 9 or 10 like the "one time reviewers" reviews which look like mostly written by friends and team members.

I Love America is clearly better than your stereotypical Hollywood romcoms. It combines the best of two worlds, French filmmaking and tried out Hollywood concepts yet it could be more polished and have benefitted from a bigger budget IMHO. The editing and overall cinematography have suffered from this apparent lack of funds.

I hope to see more (American movies) of Sophie Marceau and writer-director Lisa Azuelos. This is indeed a fresh start.

Last but not least Sophie plays a woman of 50 who poses as 43 while in reality being 57 at time of filmmaking. I had to look that up to make sure. Why? She looks incredible. I should add "older women" to my online dating settings haha.