Private Fears In Public Places (Coeurs) (2006)

In a snowing Paris, six lonely dwellers have their lives entwined while seeking for love: Nicole (Laura Morante) is looking for a three bedroom apartment to move with her fiancé Dan (Lambert Wilson), who is unemployed and has drinking problem. Her middle-aged real estate agent Thierry (André Dussollier) lives with his younger sister Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) that tells him that party with her girlfriends every night. However Gaëlle indeed spends her nights alone in cafeterias waiting for blind dates that never appear for the encounter. Thierry's colleague is the pious and repressed Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) that loans a videotape with a musical religious show to him. But in the end, Thierry sees her in an erotic dance and he believes she is sending a sign for to him. Charlotte is nursing during the nights the aggressive and nasty father of the bartender Lionel (Pierre Arditi) that attends Dan every night in his bar.

"Coeurs" is an overrated and pointless tale of loneliness. The cold and snowing Paris is a kind of metaphor to the frustration in the relationship of the uptight characters that are afraid to deliver themselves to their passions. However the hype surrounding this movie increased my disappointment with the melancholic story. The characters are charismatic and likable and it is easy to the viewer to sympathize with them. Nevertheless the gorgeous Isabelle Carré is miscast in the role Gaëlle, since she is younger and younger than her brother and she is so beautiful that I can not understand how she does not succeed in her blind dates. There are good dialogs but the conclusion is too open and frustrating for a 120 minutes running time feature that gives the sensation of "so what?" to the viewer. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Medos Privados em Lugares Públicos" ("Private Fears in Public Spaces")