Culture

Directed by Michel Leclerc. (2.5/5).
The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens) is a story of how people can bridge opposite sides of the political spectrum through human relationships. Sara Forestier plays Baya, a French girl with an Algerian father. She was brought up by her mother to have left wing views, and she systematically converts right wing conservatives by sleeping with them.
 
 

She meets Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin), a forty-something Jewish veterinarian, who is a Jospin supporter (Jospin is a moderately left wing French politician). Baya and Arthur fall in love, and teach each other different things about life.  He is conservative in his relationships with people, and she teaches him to come out of his shell and connect with his parents emotionally. Through their interactions, she realises that people’s political views don’t define them and that the left wing can also produce fascists.
 

In one scene, where both sets of parents are having dinner with the couple, Baya’s mother and Arthur’s father get into a heated argument about nuclear power. This altercation is diffused by Arthur deliberately breaking the coffee machine, so that both fix-it dads become distracted and ultimately end up bonding while fixing it. These sorts of scenes give the film complexity and let the audience see past politics into human relationships.

 
Nevertheless, the film is slightly disappointing. The film presents Baya as a prostitute who was molested as a child, but never goes into the complexities of child abuse or prostitution. This overlooking of important social issues is also reflected in a particularly disturbing scene where Baya, who has only briefly met Arthur’s mother once, massages her shoulders and tells her that her Jewish parents who were killed in the Holocaust “would have been proud of her.” Such patronising conduct seems to be glorified in the film.
 

The film was charming and insightful at times, but also tended to run into cliché. Nonetheless, overall it’s a good story and worth going to see.