Customer Reviews

How Much Do You Love Me?

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Checklist...Monica Bellucci main role (check), Monica intense kissing scene (check), Monica as a call girl (check), Monica nude (check), Monica sex scene (check), Monica in bed (check), Monica bellissima (check), Monica in Italian (check), Monica in French (check), Monica in love (check)...10/10

No seriously this is a interesting film where a man tries to buy Monica, and convince her to leave her life as a parisan escort and fall in love with him. It got its funny moments & intense moments,...needless to say the pimp boss doesn't like the idea...lol. Would you? One of Monica's newer film releases. I seen available versions in French, Italian & Spanish. I bought this while in Italia last year, the Italian version was called "Per Sesso o Per Amore"..simply translated "For Sex or For Love"

Note: French with English subtitles.

Synopsis: Francois (Bernard Campan), a lonely middle-aged man with a weak heart enters a bordello one evening with his eyes transfixed to one particular hooker. Her name is Daniela (Monica Bellucci). He claims to have won the lottery and offers Daniela a large sum of money if she would come and live with him. As the two strangers get to know each other soon their financial agreement takes on emotional consequences that neither could have suspected. Before long their entanglement grows to encompass Francois friends, neighbors and work acquaintances as well as people, some significant, from Daniela's past.

Critique: `How Much Do You Love Me' is a rather odd but enjoyable combination of erotica, romance and dark comedy rolled into one. While the viewer may find it difficult to decide exactly what genre the film is best suited for when all is said and done I would expect that they enjoyed watching. Monica Bellucci does what she does best as she subtly moves back and forth from sullen and smoldering to volcanic eruption. Bernard Campan also delivers a strong performance and there's also a small but memorable role played by one of France's finest actors, Gerard Depardieu.

If you see a Blier film, without being told it is Blier film, you will recognize it immediately. His cinematic vocabulary and his themes are unique. You know you will see a film about the struggle of men and women on a very fundamental level, usually played out in the bedroom. You know there will be beautiful women with semi-cretinous men, sporting half nude throughout the film. You know the men will have a buddy and that the buddy will have to share the woman in some way.

Blier is an auteur and a bit of a poet. You must view his films like a canvas or a poem. You cannot simply sit back and let the story unfold.

Blier is fascinated with sexual politics. He wants to study the shifts in power in the struggle of a couple. He is not a prude nor is he a moralist. He sees the male-female relationship as a power stuggle-the greater the struggle, the greater the passion.

Blier is a fetishist. He likes to linger on breasts, legs, hair, and coupling couples.

Blier is shocking and profane; he is also aware of the human comedy and comedic side of love and romance.

I find his movies entertaining and authentic, unique and disturbing. He is not for everyone.

This movie didn't know what it wanted to be, a romantic comedy, or a gangster movie perhaps? Maybe it just wanted to emulate theater and opera...The thing is, it just didn't work. The movie, and the characters, were all over the place.

The story is ... very "Pretty Woman" with a twist. An office clerk tells a prostitute, Daniela (Bellucci), that he just won the lottery and he will pay her each month for living with him. Throw into the mix that he apparently has a weak heart, Daniela's pimp, curious friends and the possibility of love. Monica Bellucci is, as always, splendid, yet even she looked bored in this film. She was horribly mismatched with Bernard Campan and even Depardieu delivered inferior work. The problem is that the characters were underdeveloped and all over the place in their emotions, their stories and their desires. In fact, the viewer is at an equal disadvantage; we do not know what is going on, and it's not even funny!

The dialogue is dry and melodramatic and soon turns into an ode to Bellucci's character ("she is a nuclear bomb" "she is a beautiful woman", etc...). I understand that Bellucci is God's gift to men, but this movie's dialogue was more like an ode written by the director for Bellucci. Yet, with all the beauty and stellar acting, not even Bellucci can save this disastrous movie.

This movie started out a bit film noir, then became a romantic comedy, then a gagster movie and then theater, throwing a bit of alternate states/frames of mind at the end. Not cohesive, main characters failed at chemistry and the movie is too into itself to let the viewer in. The 3 stars? All for Bellucci and for her alone.

I wasn't expecting much from the film - I thought, another throwaway French farce - but this drew me in. The premise has been written about here, so I won't belabor the point. What works: smart writing; great direction; a mixed sense of emotions, and the beauty that is Monica Bellucci. They don't make 'em like her anymore. Bellucci radiates a vulnerable sense of an old time movie star or should I say classic, so she doesn't sound so old - without her allure, this movie would simply not work.

Lead actor Bernard Campan and Gerard Depardieu play their parts well, and serve as Monica's foils. Although the film veers slightly into the theatre/stage like mode (think Moulin Rouge or old 1950s films) - it maintains its integrity because of its characters. Moving along like an old Francois Truffaut film - light, dark, bouncy - the script inexplicably lets the reins go at the end and digresses into a melange of weak scenarios. Like a beautiful horse ride in a carriage that hits a boulder and falls apart...

In spite of this misgiving, the film is worth watching for Bellucci fans (eye candy, but also lovely acting chops - or is that her look?), but yes, a tighter script at the epilogue would have been so much more satisfying and fulfilled this film's promising start to a far more memorable status. I have no idea why or how they lost the plot on this. Viva Bellucci anyway - women won't get it perhaps, but for the men in the audience like me, she could be polishing shoes and we'd admire her radiance - script foibles and all.

Just not a good film. Blier has made some excellent films, Preparer Vos Mouchoirs, Mon Pere, La Femme de Mon Pote...; this film is not in that category at all.

The first half hour has some interesting editing, some playing with timeline, lighting, sound, viewpoint... and then it just falls apart into standard melodrama. Yes Monica Belluci is a beautiful woman, there is no denying that. Those of you that are her fans, will not be deterred from this film. And those other 5 star reviews are completely for you.

For those who do not know Monica, the film just doesn't work. The scenes with this couple are not exciting. There isn't much chemistry between these two actors, and there certainly is no romance. Some might say, that's the point, he hired her to live with him. But for a film to be engaging, there has to ultimately be some kind of chemistry between the two people, otherwise the film slides into adult film category.

There is an amazingly annoying part to this film, the whole operatic part. For reasons I cannot fathom, there are moments where the film breaks into opera, the film goes very white with highlights horribly blown out, and there seems to be some kind of opera playing out in the plot. Then the plot goes back to it's sad melodrama.

No spoliers, but the ending is just a huge letdown. There should be irony, there just isn't. Sadly it just left a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, the ending even makes the film less comprehensible.

French with English subtitles. Previews on the disc. And most definately an R rated film.

This movie boasts a ravishing operatic soundtrack and frank sexual depictions -- and that's about it.
It lacks a coherent plot or compelling characters. Frankly, it's utterly incomprehensible and just gets more and more so as it progresses.
There is one (and only one) compelling reason to see this and that is Bellucci's astounding (and apparently natural) gravity-defying breasts which we get to see plenty of from various angles.
The story (such as it is) surrounds a lonely guy who says he wins the lottery and pays a prostitute to live with him until his money runs out. His doctor warns him he will strain his weak heart -- then the doctor keels over and dies, having first delivered a long, tiresome speech about his own pathetic lonely life. Gerard Depardieu shows up and says he is a ruthless gang boss but just talks endlessly about what a bad guy he is. Other assorted characters make brief appearances for reasons best know to the screenwriter. Then it all ends -- either happily or unhappily but by then I didn't care one way or the other.

This movie is a European twist on the premise that Money cant buy you love.
It was worth the ride, the ending got a little twisted but you should expect that from an artistic film from Europe. Nudity is prevelant throughout the movie as to be expected. This movie is not a study in character development or plot. Its a very light European jaunt through a sexual fantasy that develops into love in the end. I enjoyed it and I think you will too. I love that fact that Europe still values the form of a woman, I get so tired of the Hollywood definition "Beauty" that leaves a women looking like a starving waif.

"How Much Do You Love Me?" revolves around Monica Bellucci's character Daniela and the many different female roles she changes into and out of like so many pieces of clothing. She is definitely a whore and a seductress, but she may or may not also be a girlfriend, a wife, a mistress, an accomplice, and a scam artist. She is at times domineering but at others submissive and weak; at times jealously possessive but at others open and free; at times quiet and pensive but at others loud and raucous. It takes a while for all these different sides of Daniela to appear, but by the end of the film she is changing between them seemingly in the blink of an eye.

Few characters in the movie can resist falling for one or more sides of Daniela, and the audience too will fall in love with the performance Monica Bellucci gives in the role. It certainly helps that Monica has the beauty and the body to pull of the role, and she is not shy about sharing her voluptuous charms with the camera. In one scene she even instructs us on how she is able to seduce her target, and it is clear that Monica Bellucci knows how to use her considerable female attributes.

The other strong performance in "How Much Do You Love Me?" comes from legendary French actor Gerard Depardieu. Depardieu's character does not appear until the second half of the film, well after all the other main characters have been introduced, but Depardieu instantly captures the attention of the audience. He has played many different characters in his career, and in "How Much Do You Love Me?" he looks like he was born to play the role of an amoral gangster.

The main problem I had with "How Much Do You Love Me?" is that the action starts off slowly, and what is billed as a comedy feels like a depressive drama during the first third of the film. As it turns out it takes a while for director and writer Bertrand Blier to set the stage, and the action picks up considerably in the second two thirds of the film. "How Much Do You Love Me?" never turns into a slapstick farce; instead, it is ultimately a sophisticated adult comedy about the different roles women can assume. While being entertaining it also raises some interesting questions about just what the differences and boundaries are between those roles.

This film is a great study of human foibles and hypocracy. Absolutely hilarious most of the time! Loved the characters too. What fun!