One of our most exciting opening films ever, The Names of Love is an award-winning romantic comedy starring Sara Forestier (Games of Love and Chance - SFFF 2005) as Bahia Benmahmoud, a free spirit practicing a peculiar form of "embedded" political activism. Confident in her ability to convert any conservative man to her liberal opinions through sex, she sees it as a duty to sleep with any man who has conservative political views. She is extremely successful at it and goes from one conquest to the next until she meets the uptight, neurotic middle aged scientist, Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin). Bahia figures that with such a common name (there are more than 10,000 Arthur Martins in France), he's bound to be a real conservative and thus has to be converted... Yet, names are treacherous and things aren't always what they seem. Bahia enters Arthur’s life like an irresistible tornado and the duo improbably falls in love...

Amid the bubbly and humorous lasciviousness and moments of sheer madness, filmmaker Michel Leclerc injects satirical riffs on such hot-button sociopolitical issues as Arab-Jewish relations, anti-Semitism, immigration, and racial and cultural identity.

The Names of Love is in part autobiographical. Michel Leclerc and Baya Kasmi, who co-wrote the screenplay, met in a similar way as in the film and share the cultural background of their main characters. And it is said that the infamous subway scene is based on true events...

Shown with TBA

Q&A with Kevin Elstob, Professor of French at CSUS, follows.