MOVIE REVIEW

Audrey Tautou makes a radical departure from her "Amélie" image.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

Laetitia Colombani's "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" opens with "Amélie's" Audrey Tautou entering a Bordeaux flower shop and sweet-talking the proprietor into delivering a single rose to a cardiologist (Samuel Le Bihan) for his birthday. Tautou's Angélique is an art student of much promise, but she's so in love with the doctor that nothing else much matters to her.

Never mind that he is married or that his wife is pregnant, he's sure to leave her, insists Angélique to her concerned friend Héloïse (Sophie Guillemin), with whom she works part time at a neighborhood bar.

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Yet that very evening the doctor stands Angélique up, and, worse yet, fails to show up at the airport, where they are to take off for a two-week holiday in Florence. Not surprisingly, in reaction to such cruel treatment, Angélique starts unraveling at an ever-accelerating pace. Just as she plummets to the nadir of her despair, some 40 minutes into the film, "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" abruptly rewinds speedily right smack back to its opening shot to commence telling its story from the point of view of Le Bihan's Loïc, a man of about 30.

This abrupt shift happens not a moment too soon, for even though the doctor has come across as a callous cad, Tautou's wide-eyed-waif-turned-wounded-dove has become pretty insufferable in her self-pity.

But as Colombani continues with this shift in point of view, her film ever so gradually evolves into a chilling psychological suspense thriller. "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" is an impressively assured and confident first film and has been made with such attention to detail and mood that it's possible to regret not paying closer attention to its cleverly deceptive first part. It is ultimately unsettling in the utmost, its creepiness leavened by only the slightest touch of pitch-dark humor.

It's important not to give away anything more, but Tautou is to be commended for taking such a radical departure from her "Amélie" image. Having shown us so many facets in a woman's personality in a screen career that began only with "Venus Beauty Institute" in 1999, Tautou can't help leaving us to wonder what else she is capable of.

'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not'

MPAA rating: Unrated.

Times guidelines: Adult themes, some violence.

Audrey Tautou ... Angélique
Samuel Le Bihan ... Loïc
Isabelle Carré ... Rachel
Clément Sibony ... David
Sophie Guillemin ... Héloïse

A Samuel Goldwyn Films release of a Charles Gassot presentation of a Telema, TF1 Films production with the participation of TPS Cinema and Cofimage 12. Director Laetitia Colombani. Producer Gassot. Executive producer Dominique Brunner. Screenplay Colombani, Caroline Thivel. Cinematographer Pierre Aim. Editor Veronique Parnet. Music Jerome Coullet. Costumes Jacqueline Bouchard. Art director Jean-Marc Kerdelhue. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

At selected theaters.