I Love America | Disappointment ★★

At 50, when her children are grown and her mother, absent all her life, is about to die, a Parisian woman decides to change her life by settling in Los Angeles. She finds there the complicity of an old friend who is responsible for reviving her sentimental life, extinguished for too long.

Marc-Andre Lussier
The Press

When we know that Lisa Azuelos’ mother is Marie Laforêt, an immensely popular actress and singer during the 1960s and 1970s; when we learn thatI Love America is largely inspired by the complex relationship that the director of Dalida has had with the one who gave it life, we say to ourselves that there is quite rich material there.

Alas, this film remains to be made. Lisa Azuelos, who was very successful 10 years ago thanks to LOL, obviously evokes the tensions between her mother and her going back to the years of childhood (Sophie Verbeeck’s resemblance to a young Marie Laforêt is quite striking), but that is not really the point of her new feature film. In a comedic tone, the director focuses instead on telling how a now mature woman, named Lisa (Sophie Marceau plays the filmmaker’s alter ego), tries to rebuild her life on new foundations by settling in Los Angeles.

The trouble is that no cliché on the City of Angels and America is spared us. Stuffed with caricatural characters and gags that rarely hit the mark, the story stems from the fascination that the United States exerts on those who see this country as a personal Eldorado, but struggle to find its anchor.

When the most beautiful sequence of the film – a scene from the archives during which the real Marie Laforêt interprets Tenderness – is the one that scrolls during the end credits, so we measure the degree of our disappointment.

I Love America is offered exclusively on the Amazon Prime Video platform.

Comedy

I Love America

Lisa Azuelos

With Sophie Marceau, Colin Woodell, Djanis Bouzyani

1:42

★★