Critic Reviews

Charged by dynamite performances and Bruni Coulais’s ominous score, this romantic tragedy is more gripping than most thrillers.

For those willing to invest in the lives of these characters, even if the framework around them directly and without apology guides them toward inevitable tragedy, they will experience a drama of deep, genuine feeling.

Throughout, Benoît Jacquot never loses sight of the primordial compulsions that drive feelings and expressions of great love and beauty.

Most of life is melodramatic — emotional, involving and lacking the dignity of straight drama. 3 Hearts is life as felt from the inside.

The writer-director has done a lot of opera, onstage and on film, and he sure is fond of the dramatic gesture. His leading man, Poelvoorde, is not at first glance the type of guy who'd captivate two such stunning women, but this is France, and his desire and anguish is real.

The film is so unabashed in showing the place of passion in a bourgeois world, how a missed connection can screw up a life forever, that plot implausibilities are forgiven.

It helps immeasurably that Gainsbourg, as an actress, is as intense as her presence feels evanescent, always seemingly onto the next moment already, leaving everyone in her wake.

This is a deceptively weird movie. There’s always been an immediacy to Jacquot’s visual style; he likes to follow his characters closely, and he gets performances that are energetic but quiet.

What's interesting is how Jacquot treats the material. It is, by any measure, a romantic drama. But he uses the score, by Bruno Coulais, as if the film were something else altogether.

It leaves behind a nagging feeling, a suggestion there's more to the story than its story.