The Day I Saw Your Heart

Dysfunctional father-daughter relationship movie
"The Day I Saw Your Heart" (2011 release from France) is the most recent (July, 2012) release in the monthly Film Movement series of foreign and indie films. Please note that the original title of this movie is "Et Soudain, Tout Le Monde Me Manque" (which translates as "And Suddenly, I Miss Everyone").

Michel Blanc stars as Eli, who recently remarried and is expecting a baby with his new (and much younger) wife. Eli has 2 grown daughters, Dom(inique), who is looking to adopt a baby with her husband, and Ju(stine), the free-spirit who cannot stand her dad. Dom and Ju are appalled that their dad is to become a father again, given the terrible job he did with them. Or did he? In the first half hour of the movie, we witness what a complete jerk Eli is, and the toll it takes on everyone around him ("his loved ones" would be an overstatement).

But not everything is what it appears to be, and as the movie progresses we see signs of change in both Eli and Ju. To tell you...

The Foibles of Family: A French Charmer With Laughs And Heart
Jennifer Devoldere's dramedy "The Day I Saw Your Heart" is an offbeat combination of unbelievably quirky characters, farcical situations mixed with real life concerns, and overt sentimentality. There's not much about its plot that rings particularly true, but the underlying alienation that can exist within families grounds the movie in a way that make it virtually impossible not to respond to. It's very much like a grown-up sitcom that packs a surprisingly emotional punch. Perhaps I'm not describing the picture well. I enjoyed it very much. But my head groaned at some of the film's contrivances while my heart embraced its overall mood and message. It probably helped matters that the film boasts a strong and likable cast. Led by the lovely Melanie Laurent (who I still think was robbed of an Oscar nod for Inglorious Basterds), this French trifle has heart and charm to spare.

The movie introduces us to a typical family of comic dysfunction, the Dhreys. It soon becomes...

Loved This Film
The Day I Saw Your Heart is what is right and wonderful about independent film. This is a warm beautiful and funny film. I didn't want this film to end.

Everybody in this film is a little bit crazy, some more than others. Dad, Eli Dhrey, is the craziest but yet the one that loves everybody the most. At one point in the film Eli is talking with a doctor and says, if he was a doctor, he would call himself Dr. Dre. This is funny on so many levels; none of the least is that his last name in French is pronounced Dray, just like the good rap doctor. The film is full of non-sequiturs, people doing incredibly unexpected things. It is hard to imagine that a film in French with English subtitles would translate into a good dozen very funny jokes. The film is genuinely funny up until the day Justine sees the heart. This is always a delicate point in a film, the conflict is built and then the film changes direction to resolve the conflict. The director did an amazing job making that...

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