The Day I Saw Your Heart (2011) User Reviews

Not my kind of romantic comedy

[Red-125 · 6/10 · 31 July 2013]

The French film "Et soudain tout le monde me manque" (2011) was shown in the United States as "The Day I Saw Your Heart." It was co-written and directed by Jennifer Devoldère.

This is a movie that is billed as a dramatic comedy, but it just didn't work for me at either level. Mélanie Laurent stars as Justine, the most beautiful and least responsible Xray technician in France. We are supposed to find it adorable when she takes multiple x-rays of a man to whom she's attracted, and then uses the images to produce x-ray art. (There actually is an art form that uses X-rays, but presumably not at the risk of radiation exposure to patients.)

"She just broke up with her boyfriend, so she's sleeping on her sister's couch." Maybe the plot needed Justine to have no place to live, but the explanation is not funny or dramatic.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to accept the plot device that Justine's father truly loves his children, but never took the time or made the effort to tell them so. Now he hangs out with all of Justine's former boyfriends. He makes a suggestion to his pregnant wife that is truly awful, and that ends up with him sleeping on the couch. (It's a couch-sleeping kind of family.)

It's true that the family is Jewish, but I didn't feel that their Jewishness had any bearing on the plot. That's why I was surprised to find the film as part of a Jewish Film Festival. The festival booklet says the movie "charmed our entire screening committee." I guess it just didn't charm me.

We saw the film at the Little Theatre in Rochester, as part of the fine Rochester Jewish Film Festival. (OK--we didn't like this one, but most of the movies were great.) It will work well on DVD, if you choose to see it. However, I would suggest that you'd do better with another, much better, French dramatic comedy, Paris-Manhattan (2012), also shown at the RJFF.

Une comédie romantique vraiment verblonzhet

[The_late_Buddy_Ryan · 5/10 · 31 August 2013]

Mélanie Laurent seemed so fresh and charming in "Beginners" that we thought we'd give this one a try. Here she plays a character, Juliette, so hard-workingly quirky and self-absorbed that very little charm shows through; Michel Blanc is more appealing as Eli, her neglectful but repentant garmento father, but writer-director Jennifer Devoldère's Parisian version of Jewish humor seems pale and derivative compared to just about any of our own homegrown varieties (not sure why the subtitlist translated "schmuck" as "schwanz," btw). The comic fantasy aspects of the script seem too silly and contrived to bear any emotional weight; students of brand-name humor in the Eurozone may appreciate the feeble riffs on Starbucks vs. Illy, Crocks, Ebay and Dr. Dre, others not so much. Helpful suggestion—"Beginners" turns up on cable from time to time and is available from Netflix on Blu-ray and DVD.

Heartwarming Woody Allen kinda film.

[kripha · 8/10 · 16 July 2014]

Funny, creative, sentimental, emotional, romantic & more...

This film portrays a father and his daughter's story. The father seems to be immature but he's not, the daughter seems to hate his father but she's not. They both are same , they don't express their feelings, their love to each other. Will they ever come to know how much they love each other? You have to watch.

Michel Blanc reminds me of Woody Allen, and his characterization too. Mélanie Laurent is beautiful. Great Soundtrack(Even though i don't know much about western music, i enjoyed ), decent photography, great performances.

GREAT FILM. DO WATCH.

Flat

[cinamou · 3/10 · 22 July 2013]

Just so im not misunderstood...i love french films. We rented this after reading the storyline which we found to be really interesting. A dad trying to understand his daughter by bonding with her ex's. However, this was just a simple story that failed to become an interesting or complete movie. It's like the writer had a fine idea that was not developed in any way. Whole chunks of the story are left out, it just seemed to be a jumble of short scenes that do not build on each other whatsoever. We never fully understand any of the leads reasoning or reactions. We don't ever understand why they interact the way they do. There is no point to anything. Why did the dad never send the postcards? All those ex- boyfriends at the funeral...where the hell where they for the rest of the hour and a half? At the end Justine says that boxer-boy was the only one who didn't play golf with her dad...what does that MEAN???? Holes in the script and plot are filled with emotional outbursts and a few good jokes. Simply a mediocre, fluffy, wannabe hip drama-comedy.

Superb Film

[chuckty01 · 10/10 · 15 September 2013]

This is a movie from the heart. Anyone who had a good father unable to openly express his love will see much of their own relationship reflected in the father/daughter dynamic portrayed. Perhaps more common to all, the film is a warm reminder about opening our hearts to those around us. This deeply touching story was well balanced with humor. I wholeheartedly recommend this film.

Incidentaly, the soundtrack "Aurora" by A.Cohen made an outstanding contribution to the film's story telling. I notice it was not in the original soundtrack, which leads me to believe the soundtrack had been revised. Much for the better, though. Kudos!!

Another pointless french movie (web)

[leplatypus · 1/10 · 15 April 2015]

I can't understand how this kind of movie achieves to find money to get done. As usual, it focuses on the dull, boring lives of a bourgeois Parisian family as there can't seem to be other choices for characters, stories or locations in actual french production. In addition, our french cinema seeks now to copy also the worst of American movies with their disgusting blue / orange cinematography! Maybe the producers tried to cash of the new star Melanie Laurent but thus girl seems really cold, sophisticated and thus not very cool. My motivation to watch it was Geraldine but she has a very little part here. However she has her usual cheeky humor. In conclusion, it's totally uninteresting and ugly, so if you don't have the definition of a stinker, i don't know how to write it!

A fine French comedy

[pontifikator · 8/10 · 30 July 2012]

This French movie was directed by Jennifer Devoldère, and co-written by Jennifer Devoldère, Romain Lévy, and Cécile Sellam. They hit the nail right on the head.

Mélanie Laurent stars as Justine and Michel Blanc stars as Justine's father, Eli Dhrey. Eli has two daughters; Justine is single but has a long line of exes, and Dom (played by Florence Loiret Caille) is married. I've lost track of what happened to their mother, but Eli has remarried to the younger Suzanne (played by Claude Perron). It's Eli's 60th birthday, and Suzanne and he announce that she's pregnant. The daughters are shocked, particularly Justine.

The movie is about Justine and her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father. For some reason, he befriends all her ex-boyfriends, taking two into business with him without her knowledge, playing golf regularly with a third, and keeping in contact with several others. Yet he has shown no interest in her and little interest in Dom. Eli tells Justine's latest ex that he has no interest in children, so we have some concern about his coming child.

We see Justine meeting a new soon-to-be-ex, and Eli tries to befriend him but fails. Justine is an x-ray technician, and the new boyfriend, Sami (Guillaume Gouix), comes to see her for a possible injury to his shoulder. She x-rays his entire body and tapes the films to her window at home. Her father sees the films and goes to her for his own x-ray, and she discovers a problem with his heart. Hence the American title to the movie, and a non-too subtle reference to Eli's having shown no heart to Justine for her entire life. (She remembers bitterly his critical comments on a drawing she did at age three.)

One of the good things about the movie is that Blanc's Eli is basically a nice guy who is (a) misunderstood and (b) really doesn't care much for kids but in a casual way. Eli has a sense of humor that his family doesn't get, so some of his apparently heartless comments are just his attempt at humor. But he remains affable throughout all the misunderstandings, reaching out to Justine's exes that he works with for help and understanding. So for his daughters (and maybe his wife), he's a heartless monster at home, but he's a nice guy and true friend to Justine's exes. Those of us outside his family like Eli despite his shortcomings.

This is a French comedy, and it's carried off very well. It has enough drama and humanity to make it meaningful instead of fluff, but the humor carries the day.

Your little girl's a woman and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!

[dianahwynter · 8/10 · 28 September 2019]

We expect love stories to be about a man and a woman. But sometimes it's about a father and daughter. Ok, I know technically, it's still a man and a woman. But let's be real, who wants to think their daughter is a woman. "The Day I Saw Your Heart" is about the moment when a father wakes up to this realization - she's not his little Disney princess anymore, but a woman with desires. To deal with it, the dad goes about trying to vet all of her conquests. The sincere, earnest, charming and funny performance of Michel Blanc strikes a perfect balance between the comic befuddled father and the dad determined that the apple of his eye will not throw away her value on empty sex. It grabs your heart with humor and sincerity. If you're jaded and cynical, you just won't get it. But if you know what it's like to realize your baby has grown up and there's nothing you can't do about it, or what it's like to deal with your parents freaking out that you're a sexual being(!), well it's one hell of a ride.