Romance à l'inconnue is a bit of a mess but I liked it.

You should probably watch this if you have a soft spot for early sound films from France. It is not a masterpiece, but it has a certain charm that is hard to find now.

If you hate slow-moving plots where people talk about their feelings in very dramatic ways, you will likely want to turn it off after ten minutes.

The story follows this young guy who is basically a magnet for women who do not actually like him. He is looking for "sincere love" but keeps running into people who just want to play games.

It reminds me a little bit of the vibe in A Girl's Folly, mostly because of how naive the main character feels. He just walks into these situations with his heart on his sleeve.

There is a scene early on where he looks so genuinely confused by a woman’s rejection that I actually felt bad for him. The actor, Alain Guivel, has this face that just looks like a kicked puppy.

The women in the movie are way more interesting than he is, to be honest. They have these sharp looks and they seem to know exactly what they are doing while he is just stumbling around.

Annabella shows up and, as usual, she just takes over the screen. Even back then, you could tell she was going to be a star.

Some of the technical stuff is a bit rough around the edges. There is a moment where the sound gets kind of fuzzy, or maybe that was just the copy I saw.

It is not as polished as something like Le Paradis Perdu, which came later and felt more "big budget." This one feels smaller, almost like a play that someone decided to film on a whim.

I noticed that the hats in this movie are incredible. Seriously, every woman has a different, increasingly weird hat that somehow looks great.

The pacing is all over the place. One scene will be five minutes of two people sitting in a room, and then suddenly three months have passed in the next shot.

It is a bit jarring. You have to really pay attention or you will lose track of who is supposed to be dating who.

I think the writer, José Germain, was trying to say something deep about how hard it is to find "real" connection. But mostly it just feels like a guy having a really bad string of luck with his dating life.

It does not have the heavy drama of something like L'enfant de l'amour. It stays pretty light, even when the guy is moping.

Is it a "must-see"? Probably not for everyone. But it is a nice little time capsule of 1930s French life.

The ending is exactly what you think it is going to be. No surprises there.

But sometimes a predictable ending is what you need after watching a guy get treated like a doormat for an hour. 📽️

I liked it enough to stay until the credits. That is saying something these days.