He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Movie-style romance may never look quite the same. Neither will flower petals.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's difficult to overstate how much of a rare find this movie is. Colombani and her cast remind us that the best thrillers are built upon superb writing and strong acting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is an acerbic examination of erotic obsession, told from different perspectives, with wit, suspense and cold-blooded detachment.

USA Today Claudia Puig

This genre-busting movie has the appearance of a love story but morphs into a thriller, told cleverly in a nonlinear style. Think "Sliding Doors" crossed with "The Sixth Sense," with a little "Memento" thrown in.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Turns on an intellectual gimmick in the vein of "Memento," weaving down sinister byways, the better to click with satisfying symmetry.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Wickedly clever.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Mercifully there's more Hitchcock than Lacan in this slickly enjoyable little number, which cannily plays off the ingénue image of "Amélie's" Audrey Tautou.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

May not change the world, but it's deeply creepy and richly satisfying.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

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.

Time Richard Schickel

Colombani has created uncommonly arresting entertainment.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Poses a problem for reviewers. The entire story hinges on a plot device that occurs roughly midway through the film and alters everything that has come before. To give away this massive, unavoidable spoiler would be disastrous and unforgivable.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Perhaps not since Truffaut's "The Story of Adele H" has thwarted love been rendered so compassionately on the screen, its psychology laid bare.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film holds charms for everyone but in a very unusual way: If some audience members feel cheated at the halfway mark, others will feel that the film is finally getting started. Nifty!

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The fact that it's difficult to believe someone who looks as dewy as Tautou would be so dangerous is much of the game.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

An interesting choice for a Valentine's Day outing, He Loves Me is a weird, bubbly cocktail -- effervescent charm and troubling pathology, shaken together.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Though I wouldn't call He Loves Me a total success, it's smart, intriguing and quite ambitious, a first film by a talented young filmmaker that displays superstar Tautou's gifts in an eerie new light.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

It's clever enough, but it's mostly a contrivance to hide the fact that there's nothing interesting about the story itself.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Not half as clever as its setup leads you to think it might be: It's all buildup and no payoff, the kind of romantic thriller in which if just one sensible character called the police at the moment as any normal human being would -- well, then, you wouldn't have a movie.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

While the story starts tying up its loose ends nicely, as the end approaches, the film turns flat. It's a disappointment.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Standing on its own, it's comme ci, comme ça, self-serious when it should be adventurous, coy when it should be revelatory. One must afford it props, though, for its proud celebration of insanity. Now that is truly creepy.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Like "The Sixth Sense," He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not reaches for a crowning final twist, but in this case it falls flat.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The trouble with director and co-writer Laetitia Colombani's debut feature is that the story isn't really interesting enough to be told twice, let alone dragged out another 20 minutes after that.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Settles for the cliches of American suspense films, right down to an ending that leaves the door open to a possible sequel.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Baggy and overbroad, He Loves Me is notable only as a corrective to cinema's promiscuity with fabulous destinies.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

It's a sugar cube laced with arsenic, a nasty little film whose mean-spiritedness is surpassed only by its mediocrity.