Title: THe Names of Love (Le nom des gens)

Opens: June 24, 2011

Often when the title of a foreign movie is adapted into English, the translation is not literal. “Le nom des gens,” for example, means “People’s Names,” not “The Names of Love.” “People’s Names,” in fact, would be a more descriptive title for this film since director Michele Leclerc and co-writer Bay Kasmi want us in the audience to realize, as Shakespeare did in “Romeo and Juliet,” that your name should not be your destiny. “The Names of Love” has its heart in the right place: its message is politically liberal, it’s sexual politics is free. Because this movie is meant primarily for a French audience, given its topicality, its cutting edge could be dulled outside French shores. Have you ever heard of Lionel Jospin, for example, a man who actually appears in a cameo? He was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the 1995 and 2002 elections. Imagine a French audience puzzling out Dennis Kucinich—who was a candidate for President of the United States in 2008. Arthur Martin, the principal character in “The Names of Love,”has a name so common in France—it’s even the brand of a popular washing machine there—that the very name symbolizes FRENCH. That’s not exactly hilarious, but knowing such insular references would allow a non-French-speaking audience to appreciate the film more spontaneously.

In this story, Baya Benmahmoud (Sara Forestier) is a half-Algerian French libertine and so absent-minded at times that in one segment she walks into the Metro stark naked. Not that she thinks much of it after having this brought to her attention. She gives a new meaning to the term Sexual Politics: a leftist like her hippie mother, Cécile (Carole Franck), she believes that everyone to the right of Lionel Jospin is a fascist and uses that term so freely that the repetitiveness takes away from the comic undertones. Her aim is to convert right-wingers. She does so not by debating on college campuses but by sleeping with conservatives in order to change their politics. As she tells Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin), with whom she develops a quirky relationship, at the moment of orgasm she whispers something leftist like “not all Algerians are thieves” into their ears, which she believes has a subconscious effect on these men who come around (so to speak) in two weeks. Centrists can be converted the same day. If you think that this is comic, you’ll go for the movie. If you think the humor is forced, as I do, you’ll still go for the movie even if only to enjoy the performance of Sara Forestier, who won a César award (French Oscar) in 2011 for her role.

The relationship of a young, half-Algerian French Muslim and a middle-aged quiet French Jew is an unlikely one, one which serves the movie’s comic import while at the same time it is used to punch holes in stereotypes such as anti-Semitism, the Middle East situation, and xenophobia. Families get involved. Mohamed Benhmamoud (Zinedine Soualem) Baya’s secular-Muslim father loves to paint but believes his work would not be accepted, so he spends his time fixing gadgets. Annette Martin (Michèle Moretti), Arthur’s mother, is Jewish but has never told her son about how the Holocaust directly affected her. In the obligatory scene that finds families getting together for dinner, references to the Holocaust pop up such as the mentioning of “oven” when Baya speaks of cooking, which proves that given enough time, humor can emerge from tragedy.

The story turns serious toward the conclusion, making this movie, though exploiting the cross-cultural theme of such works as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” anything but a sitcom. Despite some forced humor and thanks to Sara Forestier’s over-the-top antics, “The Names of Love” is worth seeing for Forestier’s performance and for its championing of politically healthy ideology.

Unrated. 104 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overal: B