The best Josiane Balasko’s romance movies

Herbie, the Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own, is racing in the Monte Carlo Rally. But thieves have hidden a cache of stolen diamonds in Herbie's gas tank, and are now trying to get them back.

After learning of her husband's infidelities, a housewife invites an itinerant lesbian to move in with them. None of their lives will ever be the same again.

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Helene, a pill-addicted anesthesiologist, is mourning the death of her boyfriend when, through a car accident she causes, she chances to meet the lethargic Gilles, a young man who lives for free at his mother's hotel. Gilles pursues Helene romantically, and she eventually softens up. Gilles, however, is also devoted to Bernard, a petty crook who revels in mugging gay men. All three struggle with relationships that seem to be going nowhere.

A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband's very difficult to accept.

As she does every morning, Lucie takes advantage of her journey to work to lose herself for a while in the pages of a good book. And as she does every morning, she joins her colleagues at the office with a smile. It's a working day just like any other. Then suddenly all activity in the office stops. All attention is turned towards the window of the opposite building opposite and abanner reading: Man Alone. Is it a hoax? A cry for help? Everyone has his own interpretation, and will try, by any means possible, to discover what lies behind this mysterious message.

French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.