This is an attractive French mix of a romantic comedy and a mild, warm satire of French politics. She is Baya (the very beautiful Sara Forestier), a free spirited, very attractive girl in her early twenties. Her mother is a leftist hippie, her father is an Algerian immigrant. She has followed the politics of her mother, and she tries to get into bed with right wingers, in order to convert them to a progressive outlook. He is Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) a shy, mild mannered, middle aged minor public bureaucrat. He denies being a right winger (since he voted for the moderate socialist candidate Lionel Jospin, who by the way has a cameo appearance in the movie) but he comes from a very staid family. His father is a respected engineer in the politically incorrect field of nuclear energy, his mother is the daughter of a survivor in Auschwitz (when Baya learns of his family background, she is excited at the possibility of becoming an Arab-Jewish couple, but he plays down his Jewish connections). Very entertaining, and at its best when it mocks the more emotional strands of western leftism.
Review of The Names of Love
