Laetitia Colombani: There's method in this madness

Erotomania is not often tackled in the cinema. Which is why Laetitia Colombani had to make a film about it, says Stephen Applebaum

Laetitia Colombani's life has been touched by love and madness, so it was perhaps inevitable that the young writer/director/actress would combine the two in her debut feature, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. Starring Audrey Tautou (of Amelie fame) as Angelique, an artist whose affair with a married cardiologist is not what it seems, the French director's thriller is a confident exercise in audience manipulation as well as a convincing portrayal of erotomania (a type of delusional love).

"When I was 18," explains Colombani, who grew up in Bordeaux, "I discovered that the boy I was in love with was absolutely mad. He was psychotic... I wanted to understand him, so I decided to read books about madness."

Her research developed into an interest in psychology and psychoanalysis, and at the Ecole Louis Lumiere she wrote a thesis on the theme of madness in cinema. She watched Hitchcock and Polanski, and realised that with a mad character in your movie, almost anything is possible. Including extreme narrative twists.

Colombani first encountered this particular psychological disorder on television. Simply put, erotomania (which mainly affects women) causes the afflicted to relentlessly pursue the notion that the object of their affection reciprocates their romantic feelings. "I'd never seen any movies about this kind of madness," says Colombani, excitedly. "So I decided to write a screenplay about it." She interviewed psychologists and spoke to men who had been stalked by erotomaniacs. As to what causes the disorder, Colombani says the etiology is complex.

"Psychiatrists think it happens in the first three years of a life. Like other diseases, such as paranoia, it's about problems in childhood between the little girl and her mother, and sometimes her father too. But I didn't want to explain it in the film because it was too complicated and not very cinematic."

While madness and art are traditionally viewed as productive bedfellows, Colombani's film suggests that the combination can be lethal. "I think that when somebody is mad, art can be very dangerous," she says. "When you have a normal job that is based in reality, maybe it's more difficult to fall into madness. But when you're an artist you have no limits, you can live in an imaginary world. I wanted to show that Angelique can create what she wants, and do whatever she wants."

Colombani was just 25 when she made her film. She had one of France's most respected producers, Charles Gassot (Intimacy), behind her, and one of the country's hottest new talents as her lead. Inevitably, some people within the industry were jealous of her success. "Someone said, 'You're a woman and you're 25, so I think you have slept with your producer to have your film produced.' That made me so upset because it was not true," says Colombani. "I think if I had been a boy and I had made this movie, this person would not have said that. It's so misogynistic. But it's not very important. The most important thing is that I made my movie, and it was great."

There is a Hollywood remake in the offing, though who will direct it is still not confirmed. "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is exactly the movie I wanted to make," Colombani says, "so I'm very curious about what other people could do with the same screenplay. If the American remake is not good, everybody will say, 'Well, the original was much better'. So it's very good for me anyway."

'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not' opens on Friday