‘I Love You’ Confronts Issues of Anti-Semitism, Acceptance

Billy Hopkins’ charming but also piercing “I Love You, I Love You Not,” gracefully adapted by Wendy Kesselman from her play, opens with a gracious older woman, a Holocaust survivor, giving an illustrated lecture on concentration camp horrors to students at a posh Manhattan prep school.

The response of the pupils ranges from the pertinent to the shockingly rude and ignorant. So when the guest lecturer asks the young people if anyone of them knows a person with a concentration camp tattoo on his or her arm, Daisy (Claire Danes) does not raise her hand, much to the consternation of her best friend (Carrie Slaza), one of the school’s few African American students.

The friend knows that Daisy’s beloved grandmother (Jeanne Moreau, no less), an Auschwitz survivor, has such a tattoo. Daisy, however, like most teenagers, has a desperate need to feel she belongs and wants in no way to be perceived as different. What’s more, she’s in the throngs of a first-time passion for the school’s most outstanding male student, Ethan (Jude Law). Daisy, in fact, pronounces him “perfect”: an A-plus student, captain of the lacrosse team, student body president, who’s also rich, tall, handsome, well-traveled and sophisticated. What’s more, Daisy is pretty and intelligent enough for him to start noticing her.

The cruel irony is that Daisy’s instincts are on the money. When she and Ethan, who spend lots of time together in the most beautiful stretches of Central Park, are falling in love and she commences to trust him, she tells him about the grandmother she so much adores. Soon a photo of a starving concentration camp survivor turns up taped to the inside of the door of Daisy’s locker, with the question scrawled on the survivor’s emaciated arm: “What’s your number?”

While it’s doubtful that this act of hate was the work of Ethan, it is impossible to believe it could have happened without him having told others that Daisy is Jewish. Pretty soon Ethan is pronouncing Daisy herself perfect, but it’s not a compliment: She reads too much, she’s too obviously bright, she’s--well--different.

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The crux of the film may be Daisy’s ill-fated first love, but its heart is Daisy’s relationship with her grandmother, who lives in a gracious Hudson Valley house surrounded by a beautiful garden. Moreau’s Nana is all flowing golden hair and smocks and muumuus; since making this film Moreau has slimmed down dramatically and cut her hair for a more youthful look. But here Moreau is a virtual earth mother, nurturing, wise and playful.

Her Nana is often momentarily overcome by Holocaust memories but has too much spirit, too much love of life, to let them defeat her. It will have to be her loving strength and wisdom that Daisy needs to draw upon if she is willing or able to achieve self-acceptance.

There are moments when the film tends toward the precious--grandmother and granddaughter do an awful lot of gamboling around that garden--but that’s forgivable in the light of the shining portrayals of Moreau and Danes and the deft way in which the film depicts the stubborn, insidious persistence of anti-Semitism. “I Love You, I Love You Not” makes its point implicitly: The people you want to be accepted by usually turn out to be not worth your effort.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film contains Holocaust images, deals with anti-Semitism, has some four-letter words and mild sensuality.

‘I Love You, I Love You Not’

Jeanne Moreau: Nana

Claire Danes: Daisy

Jude Law: Ethan

Carrie Slaza: Jane

A Cinepix Film Properties presentation. Director Billy Hopkins. Producers Joe Caracciolo Jr., John Fiedler, Mark Tarlov. Executive producers Cameron McCracken, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. Screenplay by Wendy Kesselman from her play. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti. Editors Paul Karasick, Jim Clark. Production designers Bill Barclay, Gudrun Roscher. Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Cecchi Gori Fine Arts, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 652-1330, and Town Center 4, 3199 Park Center Drive, Costa Mesa, (714) 751-4184.