'Rear Window' and Semiotics in Columbani's Work

Laetitia Colombani’s film ‘He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,’ takes the traditional concept of plot and twists it into an unrecognizable, terrifying storyline. Through careful deception, her film begins as a tragic love story and ends as a stalker thriller. This brilliant plot device is an innovative use of semiotics in film.
The class discussed the meaning of ‘semiotics’ when considering ‘He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.’ The basic definition of semiotics is that there is always a signifier and something which is signified. The signifier represents the physical manifestation of a word, whereas the signified represents each person’s personal interpretation of that word. For example, the word ‘lamp’ brings a different image to each of us.
Traditionally, there is a continual metaphor in each film, novel, etc, that begins to represent a common theme, represented by something simple.
Colombani’s film puts that pattern on its ear, using the plot as the signified instead of a particular object. She puts onscreen the story of a woman obsessed, and yet, due to careful and clever editing, the audience’s interpretation is quite different. Instead of seeing the erotomaniac that Angelique is, we start the film with the image of a lovely woman who with too in love and mistreated to think rationally. As the film progresses, the signifier remains the same, but the signified changes in our minds as we realize that Loic is not, in fact, in love with her, and furthermore, has never been with her at all.
Another interesting use of this style of semiotics is Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window.’ ‘Rear Window’ was an excellent transition into the lesson about ‘He Loves Me…’ because it takes the same ingenious idea. The plot revolves around a man who believes that his neighbor is a murderer, and yet there is no proof, and so we the audience are led to believe that he is insane, only to discover that he was right all along. We think that we are watching a man slowly lose his mind, but instead we are watching a man discover something horrifying.
It was this conversation that spurred the realizations of the way that Colombani and Hitchcock each used semiotics to fulfill the message of their films. ‘Rear Window’ and ‘He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not’ have individually taken what we think we know and turned us on our heads, causing us to look deeper than before. Using semiotics, these two directors taught the class that first impressions are not always right.