Monica Bellucci L'Appartement

L'Appartement

L'Appartement (English: The Apartment) is a 1996 French film directed by Gilles Mimouni and starring Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Romane Bohringer.

Plot

Max (Vincent Cassel) is a former bohemian and an amateur writer who gets a job in New York and leaves his girlfriend Lisa, who he was madly in love with, in mysterious circumstances. After two years, he returns home to Paris and decides to settle down and get married to a French girl called Muriel. By chance, he catches a glimpse of his lost love, Lisa (Monica Bellucci) in a cafe but fails to make contact before she storms out. Determined to meet her, Max secretly cancels his business trip abroad to pursue his lost love. Through a series of ruses and perseverance, he enters Lisa's apartment. Hearing that somebody else has arrived, he hides in her wardrobe.

First he thinks it is Lisa as the girl who came to the apartment resembles Lisa from behind. After several misunderstandings they finally got acquainted. The girl introduces herself as Lisa. Eventually same night they make love and later on their relationships start to develop. The girl's real name is Alice (Romane Bohringer). During the film, flashbacks are intertwined with the narrative to provide the background for Max, Lisa and especially for Alice, shedding light on the situation.

Apparently Alice and Lisa were best friends, but Alice grew obsessed with Max from a distance. She restyled herself to look like Lisa while secretly engineering a breakup between them. Lisa is a stage actress and leaves for a two-month tour and gives Alice a letter to send to Max asking him to wait for her; Alice never sends the letter. Max, believing Lisa left because she didn't love him, accepts a job in New York and leaves. Upon her return, Lisa is heartbroken Max left her and leaves on a cruise to ease her mind, where she meets a rich, married older man named Daniel.

Lisa is being pursued by Daniel, who might have murdered his wife to get closer to her. For this reason, she avoids her flat and lets Alice use it. To complicate matters further, Alice is dating Max's best friend, Lucien, who acts as the confidant for Max.

Eventually, the truth begins to unravel in front of everyone's eyes, leading to dramatic and life-changing consequences for all involved.

In a sub-plot. Alice is seen to be acting in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, drawing comparisons between the four lovers in the film to those in Shakespeare, and it is arguable that the whole film is a rendition of the play. The film begins and ends in "reality" where Max and Muriel have a world weary but sensible life in high finance (and the implication is that Muriel is the boss's daughter, thus intimating Egeus' involvement in Hermia's marriage to Demetrius), but almost all the action takes place in a dreamlike trance where the lovers don't really know who they love. Lucien is always faithful to Alice, and pursues her, but both Alice and Lisa (who, as their names imply, are reflections of each other) initially both love Max, and Max, although madly in love with Lisa, turns to Alice for no obvious reason, just before reality dawns and he accepts his fate with Muriel. Alice leaves her life behind and flies to Rome, bidding Max one last farewell glance as he embraces Muriel at the airport. Lisa returns to her apartment and is confronted by Daniel, who drops a lighter on the floor (covered in gasoline) causing the apartment to explode and blowing Lucien through the window of a cafe across the street. The similarity with Demetrius, Helena, Hermia and Lysander is striking.

Cast

• Vincent Cassel as Max
• Monica Bellucci as Lisa
• Romane Bohringer as Alice
• Jean-Philippe Écoffey as Lucien
• Sandrine Kiberlain as Muriel
• Olivier Granier as Daniel

Reception

The film has generally been received positively by critics who praised it for its complex plot and stylish direction.

The film was also a modest Box Office hit in France gaining 135,765 admissions as well as in other parts of Europe such a s in the Netherlands where it gained 30,164 admissions. Although the film was never released theatrically in the United States it was released on DVD on August 22, 2006.

The film was remade in the USA as Wicker Park in 2004.

Posted in: Monica Bellucci