Love at Second Sight

It opens with an argument. Raphaël is a successful novelist, married to Olivia for ten years. After a bad row with his wife he wakes into a parallel reality as an unmarried middle-school teacher. There, Olivia is a well-known pianist, engaged to somebody else, and has never met him. He has to win the same woman from nothing. The idea that works is this: he only sees how his own success suppressed her career in a world where that career was left free. What is presented as a punishment is really a measurement. Hugo Gélin directed and co-wrote with Igor Gotesman and Benjamin Parent. François Civil plays Raphaël and Joséphine Japy plays Olivia, with Benjamin Lavernhe, Camille Lellouche and Édith Scob in support. It opened on 3 April 2019. Who it is for: viewers who like parallel-world premises folded into romantic comedy, in the emotional and tidy French mode. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the rules to hold. The film never explains its parallel-universe logic and bends its own rules whenever it needs to.