It's all a bit of a muddle. Now I like the meaningful silences of Continental films as much as the next man, but the silences do need to be meaningful! In "Love Me Not" the viewer is expected to fill in the emotional content of these silences, but what the heck is this content? The film is supposed to be about "surrogacy" - but in real cases of surrogacy, a lot of the action goes on in fertility clinics, with doctors harvesting eggs and mounting microscope slides and persuading sperm to get into ova, and then implanting some fertilised eggs in the uterus, etc. Perhaps surrogacy is not the right word here. It's going to be Daddy's baby, but not Mommy's. The "surrogate" is going to be the natural mother. OK, so no fertility clinics will be required...
But wait! It's really a crime story? The body of a woman is burned beyond recognition. But the body of which woman? The best aspects of this film are the neat ironies, and the authentic details about how the fraud is put together, and how life insurance works and how cases are investigated, or not investigated. A crime story? So where are the cops? But cops won't be necessary, because the fraudster wife is simply so incompetent. Observe some of the rudimentary precautions please, Mrs, please.
So crime doesn't pay. Retribution is inevitable. But at this point we plunge into some really dreary sadism. Are any of the participants enjoying themselves? It's the worst advertisement for BDSM, ever. The Greeks invented tragic drama, but the tragedy here is that good materials have been put together so badly.
Review of Love Me Not
