I Love America
Despite the suggestiveness of its title, I Love America isn’t a new patriotic Fox News documentary series. It’s, in fact, a thoroughly predictable, cliché-infested and straightforwardly satisfying French romantic comedy. It’s the sort of pure wish-fulfilment fantasy that has been done so many times before, but here executed with a stylishly light touch, setting out to accomplish everything it puts its mind to.
Sophie Marceau is Lisa, a 50-year-old woman disillusioned with life in Paris, who relocates to Los Angeles, where her gay BFF Luka (Djanis Bouzyani) is already living. It’s almost like a reverse Emily in Paris, except one can watch it without fantasising about the characters meeting their ends in violent ways. Although she’s facing the impending death of her terminally ill mother, Lisa is still on the lookout for love. After a tarot card reader tells her that love isn’t on the horizon, Lisa figures she’s fine with settling for meaningless sex. But life (or rather, the script) has other things in store.
It’s the sort of story that almost defiantly establishes itself as existing in a gilded world thoroughly disconnected from reality. Lisa is supposedly a film director (who doesn’t do any directing), and, beyond that statement, there’s no real explanation as to how she’s able to afford to jet between her well-heeled family home in Paris and her plush, sunlight-drenched, open-plan Los Angeles rental. Her character’s career seemingly only exists to allow Lisa to work on a screenplay of her own life, creating an excuse for her to narrate multiple emotionally manipulative flashbacks (soft lighting, soft piano music), as she explores her troubled relationship with her mother. The character of Luka threatens to be an awful stereotype: the gay bestie who only exists to support the heterosexual protagonist’s ambitions. Fortunately, Luka is given his own (very) minor subplot, allowing for some basic character development.
Marceau manages to be simultaneously regal and relatable as Lisa goes from one awkward encounter to another, with any semblance of a plot only emerging once the film is well underway. I Love America is almost refreshingly familiar, reassuring its audiences that, while they won’t be surprised, they’ll still be well-compensated for their time.
Oliver Johnston
I Love America is released on Amazon Prime Video on 29th April 2022.
Watch the trailer for I Love America here:
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