How Much Do You Love Me? (2005)

There's hardly a Monica Bellucci movie where the main storyline does not involve her incredibly seductive body.. it is just absolutely, totally impossible to ignore. She is a woman most any man (and lots of women) would find physically addictive. Whatever the scene you just cannot take your eyes off her.. what she says holds little interest, and it's not that she does a bad job acting.. it's just not the main reason she is on screen (you don't watch her films for the story). Partial or full nudity is the linchpin of her acting experience. She was amazing in this film ten years ago.. she is now at 50yo, still amazing today, and will be the same in another decade. It's almost as if women like her are somewhat immune to the aging process. "The world's biggest power is... the beauty of a woman"... and Monica is a nuclear weapon.

In Paris, after winning the lottery, the clerk François (Bernard Campan) goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to the prostitute Daniela (Monica Bellucci) to live with him until the end of his money. François is a lonely man, with heart problems and Daniela stays with him for eight days. Then, she decides to come back to her man, the mobster Charly (Gérard Depardieu), but she misses François and returns to his place. But once a whore, always a whore.The promising "Combien Tu m'Aimes?" is a great deception: having Monica Bellucci, Gérard Depardieu and Bernard Campan in the cast, and directed by Bertrand Blier, this "dramatic romantic comedy" has a weird development and a confused and disappointing open conclusion. I honestly did not understand the last quarter of this movie, which is simply awful. The screenplay wastes a good and original idea, and the character of Gérard Depardieu is absolutely dull and ridiculous. The beauty of Monica Bellucci, even with forty-one years, is the best this mislead movie can offer. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Por Amor ou Por Dinheiro?" ("For Love or For Money?")

Body (and look!) of Monica Belucci is stunning (as usually), but her role is poor - charming whore who wants to have respect and love, but finding that discovers it boring, escapes back to his soulless gigolo (Depardieu), and misses back her lover's gentle touch, returns to face a truth that he isn't rich... one truly understands frustration of other women at dancing party - "why everybody loves her?!" - again because of that body and those eyes. On the other hand, playing of Campan (Francois) is astonishing, it is probably on of his best roles (regretfully it was my first encounter), though I wish him t have better ones too! overall good movie to watch it once, and I'm sure every man returns to it to observe that beauty, that stunning whore... 7, not more... . Milena was something so much sweeter...

As his earlier film "Merci la vie", "combien tu m'aimes" is Blier's homage to almost unknown Alain Robbe-Grillet films, auteur of the Nouveau Cinema, movies that try to invent a new language or new styles to show stories in cinema. So in this movie actors are shown as actors, they're really acting and don't try to seem natural. In fact they're real accessories to serve the director. He ask them to do whatever he wants and big stars even like Depardieu listen to his orders because he knows that he's a good director that knows what he wants and that he's in control of the movie. But I have to tell that it is a really sexist movie, some women shouldn't watch it because they would be offended. The word "whore" comme at least every minute, and Bellucci is shown as a female object. Sure the movie say that women can manipulate and control men, but at the end of the movie we see that men have the last word. There is some hilarious scenes like the one in the corridor with the neighbor and Bellucci arguing about how women should have an orgasm, and some jouissive scenes for their daring, but there are also some scenes I didn't like because they were maybe 'too much' and useless. Still it's a really enjoyable film to see.