Metacritic reviews

For those who wish to decode The Names of Love, there's a sharp commentary on French prejudices, character types, history, and culture embedded in Michel Leclerc's droll autobiographical French comedy.

The American romantic comedy has grown distressingly moribund lately, but anyone looking to freshen up the genre a bit need look no further than Michel Leclerc's The Names Of Love.

Sharp-witted, sometimes surreal and largely autobiographical French-language comedy.

For all the potentially dangerous subjects it glosses, above all the tangled legacies of the Holocaust and the Algerian war, The Names of Love dances away from any uncomfortable provocation. Even when sticking out its tongue, it is finally just an airy comedy riding on one cheeky, incandescent performance.

Chockfull of ideas in a way that's both scattershot and more than a little exciting.

Too much of The Names of Love is a joke book posing as a movie.

Strained and mildly amusing. The real reason to see the movie is the delightful performance by Sara Forestier, who rightly won the French version of the Oscar for her portrayal of the carefree Baya.

The question of whether the couple can overcome respective traumas and inbred social attitudes is essentially moot; the real query is how much insufferable Gallic tweeness you can stand before simply shouting "no, merci!"

The pathetic attempts at outré, taboo-busting humor as sociopolitical commentary can't disguise what this film really is: a mawkish, MOR comedy of manners that even its straw man Nicolas Sarkozy would find suitable for date night.

Director Michel Leclerc's comedy plays like one of those foreign-movie spoofs Jerry and the gang would go to see on a "Seinfeld" episode. Only here, there's no "young girl's journey from Milan to Minsk" - just from madcap to moronic.