Film

He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not

A French psychological thriller that plays a devastating trick on you. Audrey Tautou stars as a art student obsessed with a married man, but midway through, the film inverts its own narrative and you realize nothing was what it seemed. Stylish, cunningly constructed, and genuinely unsettling—it's the kind of film that makes you want to immediately rewatch it.

TMDb rating3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy slow-burn psychological stories about obsession, where the pleasure lies in watching a mind unravel and in noticing what the film is quietly arranging beneath it.

Skip it if you want a romance with warmth or a thriller with clear stakes; this is cool and withholding, and its unease is the point rather than a route to release.

What it asks of you: At just over ninety minutes it moves at a deliberate pace, lingering on glances and small gestures, so it rewards patient attention rather than skimming.

If you liked this

Fatal Attraction1987

The obvious ancestor: obsessive love as psychological horror, told with mounting dread and a finale that punishes delusion. Glenn Close's performance is ferocious and the film knows exactly what it's doing.

But The gender politics haven't aged perfectly, and it trades in some pretty crude psychopathology. It can feel a bit overwrought now.

Fatal Attraction poster

Mulholland Drive2001

Another film that systematically lies to you, revealing its true shape only on a second viewing. David Lynch uses Los Angeles like a dream, and Naomi Watts is luminous and terrifying in turns.

But It's deliberately oblique and doesn't hand you answers. Some find it pretentious; others find the lack of closure actively frustrating.

Mulholland Drive poster

Shutter Island2010

DiCaprio investigates a psychiatric hospital while the film investigates him. It has that same mounting dread, the sense that the ground beneath you is tilting, and a climax that recontextualizes everything you've seen.

But It leans pretty hard on the twist ending, and once you know it, there's less reason to return. Some find it manipulative rather than clever.

Shutter Island poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Amour2012

Both films interrogate the nature of love and perception—but where 'He Loves Me' uses formal trickery to expose delusion, Haneke strips away all artifice to show love as a kind of devastation that requires no manipulation to hurt.

Michael Haneke's chamber piece about an elderly couple facing illness and mortality. It's quiet, relentless, and emotionally crushing—no tricks, just the unbearable weight of love when it means watching someone disappear.

But It's almost unrelentingly bleak. Haneke doesn't offer comfort or distance. Some find it punishing rather than moving.

Amour poster
More like this (8)

The Double Life of Véronique1991

A mesmerizing Polish-French co-production about duality, coincidence, and the impossible connections between strangers. Irène Jacob is extraordinary, and Kieślowski's visual language is hypnotic.

But It's deliberately enigmatic and doesn't explain itself. The pacing is glacial; patience is mandatory.

The Double Life of Véronique poster

Persona1966

Bergman's masterpiece about a woman who stops speaking and the nurse assigned to her. It's formally audacious—the film itself seems to fracture—and it probes identity and performance in ways that still feel radical.

But It's genuinely difficult. Black and white, 84 minutes that feel like three hours. Not for passive watching.

Persona poster

The Vanishing1988

A Dutch thriller about obsession and the unknowable. Taut, intelligent, and it builds an almost unbearable tension from a simple premise. The ending is genuinely controversial—in the best way.

But The American remake is famous for gutting it. The original is bleaker and less comfortable, which is precisely why it works.

The Vanishing poster

May2003

Released the same year, this indie horror is about a lonely, odd woman who becomes dangerously fixated on others. It's darkly funny, genuinely unsettling, and Angel Catbird commands the screen with real vulnerability.

But The tonal shifts are wild—it careens between comedy and horror. Some viewers find it uneven rather than inspired.

May poster

Gaslight1944

The film that named the psychological manipulation we all now recognize. Ingrid Bergman as a woman systematically convinced of her own unreliability. It's the DNA of every domestic thriller that followed.

But It's old enough to feel theatrical. The pacing is deliberate, and the film doesn't rush toward anything.

Gaslight poster

The Skin I Live In2011

A Spanish thriller about obsession and transformation. Visually stunning and deeply unsettling, it builds to a revelation that makes you reconsider everything. Antonio Banderas is excellent.

But It's genuinely disturbing in its implications. Some will find the central premise—what he's actually done—too dark to forgive.

The Skin I Live In poster

A Tale of Two Sisters2003

Both use stylization and narrative unreliability as a window into fractured psychology. Here, the aesthetic is horror rather than thriller, but the engine—how grief and trauma distort perception—is identical.

A South Korean psychological horror that unfolds like a fever dream. Two sisters return from a hospital to a home that seems to shift around them. Visually gorgeous and deeply strange, it gets under your skin.

But The fragmented narrative can feel frustratingly opaque. The twist, when it lands, divides viewers—some find it devastating, others feel cheated.

A Tale of Two Sisters poster

Phantom Thread2017

Like 'He Loves Me,' it's fascinated by how two people can live in completely different versions of the same relationship. Here the ambiguity is the point—we're never quite sure who's manipulating whom, and the film refuses to settle it.

Paul Thomas Anderson's film about a fastidious couturier and the woman who enters his precisely controlled life. It's a love story that plays like a slow-motion duel, ambiguous about who's winning and whether love and control can even be separated.

But It's glacially paced and emotionally cold. Some find it beautiful and hypnotic; others find it airless and mannered.

Phantom Thread poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by