You Will Be Mine

There are two ways to tell a story about an obsessive, unhealthy relationship. The first is to make it a hard-hitting drama where we focus on the characters, their feelings, motivations and the potential depths of this situation. The second way is to make it a thriller. Just go balls to the wall with the unhealthy bits and don’t worry too much about the depth. You Will Be Mine couldn’t decide which camp it was in. So it’s both and yet neither.

You Will Be Mine is about a young woman named Marie who is studying music. Unable to afford living alone, Marie is roommates with a family friend named Emma. And Emma is bad news. There’s no real build-up here. Emma is possessive and obsessive from the get-go. This obvious causes Marie to struggle socially, academically and emotionally. Emma also adds a sexual component to the relationship. Subsequently, Marie struggles unsuccessfully to free herself from Emma’s grip. Emma’s behaviour generally falls into the realm of plausible deniability and Marie can’t figure out who or how to ask for the help she so desperately needs.

As mentioned, there’s little build up to this core relationship turning unhealthy. We don’t get too many early scenes of Emma being nice or anything. There’s also no arc to Emma’s obsession. Marie moves in and Emma just immediately decides to be possessive and unhealthy towards her. At the end of the first act, I was intrigued where the movie would go as it had already cranked up the unhealthy tension so high. But it doesn’t build much tension from here. Most of You Will Be Mine is a tension plateau. The amount of drama present at 20 minutes into the movie is virtually the same as where we are 20 minutes from the end.

Marie probably isn’t queer which made me question if I should even include the movie on this site. After the first sexual experience they have together, Marie tells Emma she doesn’t want to “kiss and stuff” again. Emma then ignores this and continues to force sexual situations on Marie. So that’s not queer on Marie’s part, it’s just rape. Marie actually has a boyfriend through most of the film. He’s a nice, non-obsessive guy who wants to help her. His character basically exists to provide a healthy and heterosexual escape and alternative to the non-consensual gay nightmare Marie finds herself in.

You Will Be Mine lack a layer of depth to its characters and situations. So I think it would’ve worked better if it leaned into being a thriller. As a drama, its character work is too weak. It doesn’t have much to say as a movie other than Emma is a bad person. That’s enough content to run a thriller but You Will Be Mine tones it down too much to be one. I don’t know if the film would’ve been objectively better but it would definitely be more entertaining if You Will Be Mine went the whole-ass thriller route.

There is an interesting dynamic shift that happens in the last handful of minute of the film. But just when I started to get intrigued by it, Emma just randomly dies and the the film ended. How very French of them. You Will Be Mine is a major plateau of a movie. There’s little rising action, we just exist at a state of 7/10 intensity through almost all of the runtime. It’s not thrilling enough to be a thriller but doesn’t have enough depth to be a drama.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

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