L'appartement

Plot synopsis:
Max (Vincent Cassel) is a former bohemian and an amateur writer who gets a job in New York and leaves his girlfriend Lisa, with whom he was madly in love, in mysterious circumstances. After two years, he returns home to Paris and decides to settle down and gets engaged to Muriel (Sandrine Kiberlain). By chance, he catches a glimpse of his lost love, Lisa (Monica Bellucci) in a café, but fails to make contact with her 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 get acquainted. The girl introduces herself as Lisa. The same night they make love and their relationship starts to develop. The girl's real name is Alice (Romane Bohringer). During the film, flashbacks are intertwined with the narrative to provide a background for Max, Lisa, and especially for Alice, shedding light on the situation.
The flashbacks show that Alice and Lisa were best friends, living in apartments on the same floor of two facing buildings, and that Alice became obsessed with Max, Lisa's then-boyfriend, from a distance. She restyled herself to look like Lisa while secretly engineering a breakup between them. Lisa is a stage actress and leaves abruptly for a two-month tour, giving Alice a letter to deliver 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 that Max has left her and leaves on a cruise (a gift from Alice) 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 is also Max's confidante.
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 imitating 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 after reading her diary, 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 café across the street.

Tags: romantic, intrigue, flashback

Review:
This is an astonishing film: a romantic thriller with a convoluted but perfectly constructed and devastatingly symmetrical plot, brilliantly buttressed by the use of recurring visual motifs.
There's one small scene about three quarters of the way through where she does nothing more than smile; yet in that instant, says more than hours of Hollywood junk.One cannot do justice to this film without at least mentioning the superb, sequential climax: sad, shocking, ironic and subtle in turn.
I knew nothing about this movie after being recommended to watch it by a friend, but I decided to take a chance on it as I have come to really like Vincent Cassel ('La Haine', 'The Crimson Rivers', 'The Brotherhood Of The Wolf'), even if I don't always enjoy the movies he's in (e.g.
The packaging proclaimed 'The Apartment' to be "the French Single White Female", and while there is SOME comparisons between the two movies I think it gives the viewer quite misleading expectations, and is probably best ignored.
"L'appartement" has to be among the best French films I have ever seen (along with "Hatred", also starring Vincent Cassel, and those great Gerard Dépardieu/Pierre Richard movies).
With a bit of effort following the twists and turns, you can understand each of the characters; and key events in the film are reshot from the point of view of different people.
The acting was very good, with a standout performance by Romane Bohringer as  Alice torn in three directions by the three other characters in the ensemble.
It's symbolic for them to have fallen in love with this movie!Directing: his camera is bright, alive, plays with the sets or can be mysterious with long close-up "à la David Lynch".Cinematography: the light is beautiful, between gold and rust, like their love!A never-seen before Paris: It's a Paris out-of-time of more accurately, a composite of a lot of districts!
A true delight with so many great things going for it from the homage to Hitchcock to two beautiful ladies in Romane and Monica.
While Monica is very beautiful, Romane is a very sexy lady and steals many of the scenes she inhabits.I am not sure why people think this film is convoluted as the scenes are such a perfect blend of past and present acting as a counterpoint to the characters' own remarkable journey that the film simply flows and you barely realise that 116 minutes of beauty and mystery have left the viewed enchanted and bewitched.
Like most French and European films this story would never translate across the Atlantic as no studio could capture the magic without throttling the life out of it with the Hollywood bleaching common to most movies that become lost in translation.
perhaps if they let someone like a young Polanski work on it then maybe they would not totally butcher an English version...For those who do not watch subtitled films you will spend a lifetime in ignorant bliss.
Stylish, erotic and complex, Gilles Mimouni's only film to date appears at first sight to be quintessentially French, but has links to American identity-themed, noirish thrillers, such as Preminger's Laura and Hitchcock's Vertigo.
(I'm also not so sure as other postings that all the locations and interiors are actually Parisian; the credits indicate that a lot of the movie was made in Spain.)Max (Vincent Cassel) is a successful, young executive, engaged to be married, who catches a fleeting glimpse of an ex-lover, Lisa (Monica Bellucci), and immediately drops plans to travel to Tokyo, in order to find her.
By the end of the film almost every i has been dotted, and t crossed, so that theoretically it should be possible to re-edit the movie so that it is linear.
A wonderful story about the consequences of obsessive love with the beautiful romantic back streets of Paris as its location.
After two years working in New York in the 90's, the successful executive Max Mayer (Vincent Cassel) returns to Paris and will sooner get married to his fiancée Muriel (Sandrine Kiberlain).
However, he glances at a woman leaving a telephone booth and he believes she is Lisa (Monica Bellucci), the greatest love of his life who had disappeared years ago.
Max borrows the car of his best friend Lucien (Jean-Philippe Écoffey), who is in love with his girlfriend Alice, to go to the apartment wait for Lisa.
The performances of Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Jean- Philippe Écoffey are excellent, but the sexy Romane Bohringer steals the movie in the role of an outcast woman obsessed by her only girlfriend.
Why Lisa trusted on a single letter, instead of looking for Lucien and asking Max's address in New York and send an ultimate letter?My interpretation of the plot is that the lonely and needy Alice is obsessed by Lisa and creates all the missing encounters to avoid Lisa to meet Max and leave her alone again.
Well, do not waste the time because this film is a pretentious, overlong piece of French 'style' - lots of visual cleverness and moody pouting (called great acting when it is in a French film) but little substance.
At the end you could not care less what happens to these self-obsessed characters and I must have had a bad day because I could not follow a lot of this.
This is "Single White Female" meets French pretension made by a director who has studied too many Hitchcock films but failed the exam..
It was also my introduction to the hauntingly beautiful Monica Bellucci (HER face could launch a thousand ships).The twists and turns and bizarre ending makes this a must see.
Many seem to have come up with their own explanation for the conclusion in an attempt to make sense of it and maybe that was Mimouni's intention (which makes this a pretentious film) but for me merely rationalizing that a character is a 'flawed' human being isn't enough to explain an action that is completely out of place.
I'm not saying that I would have preferred a happy ending (certainly not the usual Hollywood ending) but at least something that made sense of the character.Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Romain Bohringer deliver first rate performances.
Had it not been for the disappointing ending and lack of consistency, this could have been a great film..
You can't tell much of the plot without giving some of the game away so as to the story let me only say this: The worldly Max (Vincent Cassel) is about to be engaged to Muriel (Sandrine Kiberlain).
Think of Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo crossed with Kurosawa's Rashomon and treat yourself to having the action happen in Paris with the achingly beautiful Monica Belluci, a passionate Romane Bohringer and that unwitting, lucky bastard Vincent Cassel who gets to smooch with both of them.
I loved everything in this film, the colors, the acting, the camera work, the script, the flat (I want a flat like that!!)...
However, Romane Bohringer had even at this early date more than mastered the art of 'personality dominance', whereby beautiful girls fall by the wayside and don't get noticed because Romane is being so fascinating you can't take your eyes off her long enough even to look at the beautiful girls, and you end up only thinking of her.
A brilliant storie, very detailed, which I just very much love.The best French movie I've seen (and French cinema is very good)!.
Specially for Vincent Cassel who wouldn't (at the time it was filmed) be the first character you think of for such a role.
As I've only seen about twenty French films, I can't say whether they are prominent characteristics in French films in general or just this genre.The film's comments on the whimsical nature of love and the constant, almost vaudevillian near-misses where the characters come within echo the shenanigans that go on in Amelie when she's trying to chase down Nino.I don't know why I'm babbling on about this anyway, it's pretty irrelevant.
L'appartement is simply a great movie : Mimouni's timing and cross-reference story is a state-of-the-art craftsmanship.
What I prefer in this movie is, apart from the excellent acting of the three main actors, Paris, Paris which is an active part of the story as the eternal city where anything can happen, especially decisive encounters.
An example of this is evident throughout the film as Muriel/Lisa stalks Max.The montage is essentially the story.
This is a good story marred by miscasting, none more so than Vincent Cassell as Max, around whom the plot swirls.
These 2 movies are quite different, but they have one thing in common: a GREAT story.
several years ago i saw this film, without subtitles, on television, and despite me not understanding a word of what the characters were saying i still got the general idea, and the mood of the film fascinated me no ends.at long last i saw it again a few weeks ago.
what follows is a wild rollercoaster ride of flashbacks, changing perspectives and really inventive twists in the plot, and at the end of the film i was left breathless.
Gilles Mamouni is playing with the audience with the story of Max (Vincent Cassel) in search of his biggest lost love (Monica Bellucci) just before to get engaged to another woman.
Mamouni uses many flashbacks sequences without warning so the best way to know where we are in the story is to watch for the actor's haircut.
A very good french film about the twists and turns in relationships.
This film has many twists and turns in the plot and is superb.
Reflecting the drama through the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was a lovely touch and the conundrum plot never gets confusing because of the simple but perfect devices of differing hairstyles to assist the viewer.
It's seeing a film like this that reminds you why you first fell in love with cinema.
This is a wonderful thriller I watched many times and never can get enough of.It's all about the obsessive love 5 people have for eachother in Paris, (un)lucky coincidences, false identities.The music makes it really gripping.There are hardly any flaws in the characters,just the end is not very credible,but a definite "must-see" still..
A lot has already been written about the film itself, so instead of adding to the noise I just want to say a few words on the two female actors.It has to be a daunting prospect for any actress to star, in a sense, versus the spectacular Monica Bellucci, but Romane Bohringer pulls it off to sensational ends.
A film starring Monica Bellucci where I fall in love with the other girl??
that is, until the scheming, neurotic and obsessive Alice (the versatile Romane Bohringer) becomes very involved in the lives and loves of the other three.The rich plot is thickened by a curious chronological jumble, and the movie emerges as an intricate jigsaw, the eye-candy of picture-postcard Paris at the heart of it all.
The use of colour does not go unnoticed, particularly in Lisa's spectacular apartment (presumably accounting for the film's title), where the reds and yellows provoke the fires of passion and lust.The audience can relate to Max: he truly wears his heart on his sleeve and is constantly punished by irony and circumstance for it.
Monica Bellucci (Cassell's real-life spouse at the time of writing) has recently found fame in the Anglophone film industry, but perhaps for the wrong reasons - true, she is divinely beautiful, but behind that is a talented actress who can dominate a scene in classic 'leading-lady' style, which many British and American actresses dismiss in favour of the all-too-easy 'subtle' approach.All in all, watch this film!
I was captivated by the film's raw beauty- cinematography, Parisian splendour, the mise en scene, and of course the gorgeous cast of Vince Cassel and Monica Bellucci- the epitome of elegant perfection.
There are many love stories in this movie.
And the different characters in this movie have love interests that are quite diverse!
And also Monica Bellucci..She has a perfect beauty I have ever seen..Recommended for everyone who can feel...-Look at this, so simple.Yet majestic sober.
Max, who has lived in New York for two years and intend to marry a girl he met there, comes back to Paris and unexpectedly meets his ex-girlfriend whom he still fancies very much but finally finds out the one he loves the most in fact is her best friend.
The good cinematography also makes her and Monica Bellucci look very beautiful.
A good commentary of today's love and undoubtedly a film worth seeing.==Monica Bellucci is still so pretty especially in IRREVERSIBLE.
The director has left more than enough clues in all scenes.The first 3/4 of the movie centers about the question: why did Max and Lisa split?
Having experience with French movies, I predicted that the story pretty soon would get a sick twist and I was right.
In the end of the first part it becomes clear, after many twists and turns, that Max and Lisa were manipulated by Alice.
Well, of course not, time has passed by and things have changed.Many European movies use a story telling technique I fully enjoy.
Worst of all is Monica Bellucci ("ooh,isn't she so yummy?") who swans through the film to no great effect,her role merely to be absurdly gorgeous and act as a hollow erotic talisman for the archetypal passionate yet soft-headed French romantic lead,played by the gormless Cassel.
Then again did Max ever really love Alice/Lisa/his fiancée?
-SPOILERS------------ I am a fan of 60's-70's french cinema but not necessarily of the more modern,so to be honest i watched this because of Bellucci.She is very young here,extremely beautiful and on top of this supposedly this movie is where they met with Cassel,so it gives it some extra importance.The movie begins with a very nice style reminiscent of DePalma.Then suddenly we are thrown to flashback,and the back and forth goes on which gets tiring.I don't mind one flash back,but do it and get it over with man!!!Anyway,the movie is still interesting to me until a point when the first and definite hole in the plot,that allows for the rest of the story,never lets me enjoy the rest.I can allow for little holes here and there,but not to base an entire plot on hot air.This is the story of a man who is literally searching for an old flame.This is the main plot.I will go along,when the story at some point will convince me that there are really mysterious things going on,but in this story there's nothing really mysterious.Bellucci-Cassel are a couple ,then Bellucci urgently has to leave for some job in Italy(not the farthest place on earth from Paris)and she leaves him a message,which for reasons later explained he doesn't get.OK,so what?Don't these people have phones?Supposedly she was away for 2months(not a century exactly) and wouldn't she call her boyfriend in Paris to see how he's doing?
Of course not.Instead,even after she gets back she forgets all about him.And thats fine,but later in the movie she tells her friend that it was her greatest love and was ready to commit for the first time in her life.Yet she failed to give him a call for 2months and then never tried to get back with him.And what about Cassel's character?He was supposedly unable to locate her in Italy,really hard to find someone in Italy,its probably like Siberia,especially an actress who is probably listed even in the arts papers.And after 2months when she would be back,really hard to find her and ask for an explanation.
First because you already know all the plot turns that make the story great and second because - I never thought I would ever say this - Diane Kruger is much better for the part than Monica Bellucci (and this comes from a man who is a big fan of the latter).
Well I avoided that movie like the plague when it was first released, simply because, a) I knew it had absolutely nothing to do with Wicker Park, and living in Chicago, I didn't see why they called it that - it was filmed in fricking Canada for a start!
Great acting, Romane Bohringer is an absolute gem - sorry, but she acts Monica Bellucci off the screen in every scene.
And I've seen Jean-Philippe Ecoffey in a lot of movies and I just love him - the scene where Alice dumps him in the restaurant and he just looks like someone's told him his puppy's been run over was excruciating!
Even his clever denouement has you guessing.The three central performances are also top class, with Vincent Cassel, Romane Bohringer and Monica Bellucci doing their utmost to add to the mystery.
When they get it right, they really get it right.Vincent Cassell is intriguing as the deceptive Max, Romane Bohringer obsessive as the new Lisa, and Monica Bellucci is mysterious as the first Lisa.
I was surprised how I got hooked by the story, which is a combination of "Midsummer Night's Dream", "Rear Window", and 1940's noir movies (North by Northwest for example), but in a colorful palette.Brillian start of careers for Cassel and the young French actress Romane Bohringer (who plays Alice).
As of now I haven't rewatched the movie and I don't think I will.The story follows the experiences of a man, Max, who is engaged to be married to Muriel.
The movie then moves through a whole range of twists and finally leads to an ending which could be interpreted in many ways.
What I love about the fact is that a movie about obsession, jealousy is done in such a light hearted manner.
Vincent Cassel as Max gives a great performance.
But the real star of the movie is Romane Bohringer as Alice.
L'Appartement is a French film that stars Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Romane Bohringer.It was directed by Gilles Mimouni.The movie follows the romantic obsession of Max (Cassel), a young corporate hotshot who leaves his successful new world behind to search for his elusive lost love Lisa (Bellucci).