The story is that of a tax official (Benoit Poelvoorde) who misses his train home. This leads him to meeting a mysterious woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) with whom he becomes instantly infatuated. The two romantically decide to meet at a certain time and at a certain place some days later but chance intervenes. Some time later, he meets another woman (Chiara Mastroianni) who interrupts his remorse at never having made that fatal appointment, but believing himself happy and content he is suddenly shocked and ashamed to discover that she is the sister of her previous object of desire.
Jacquot's approach to it is noirish. Its relentless and inevitable pace as well as its suspance is Hitchcockian, while the anguish that heavily defines its doomed romanticism recalls classics such as David Lean's Brief Encounter. In fact, the many references to other classics of the genre certainly ends up powerfully questioning the whole concept of romanticism. The screenplay too is very clever in its profound examinations of love, but remains at a distance when it comes to actual character examination. For instance, in the scenes when Boivent and Gainsbourg finally meet, there is very little sexual tension. The tension all the way through feels more like the type that one would associate with the thriller genre and that is what makes it all the more unsettling.
However, this distance that Jacquot chooses to maintain makes it easier for us to understand the imperfections of each of the individual characters. As a result we also get to understand that forbidden love is always much more appealing than even the most loyal and stable one. That is simply because in human nature we often resort to wanting the one we can't have - and it drives us made - for want of another ad lib, this time quoting lyrics penned by Morrissey whose self professed and much publicised asexual leniances make him more than a suited reference in a film such as 3 Hearts.
The performances are great. Benoit Poelvoorde is as pathetic and he is sympathetic - he is an everyman, if not a downright loser, who represents a general lenience people have to self-destruction. Equally compelling are the radically different performances by Gainsbourg and Mastroianni, adding a haunting element of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane to the mix. There is also a touch of elegance in the film's art direction and cinematographer, which at once recalls the boredom and alienation as well as the decadence out of which love complications arise out of the films of Antonioni or Visconti. As a whole, some may even be angered by the imperfections of the characters, who seem to be keen on following their hearts more than their heads. But the vast majority will find its closeness to realism the most irritating thing about the film, and that is really why 3 Hearts is so powerful. Perhaps the only thing that lacks is comedy relief in the film's final part that ends up feeling a little heavy. But the decadence of love has rarely been so powerfully demonstrated in the cinema of recent times.
