Jeanskynebu
the audience applauded
Mathilde the Guild
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
leplatypus
I watched it to complete Leila's filmography but this movie is so far her worst participation. It's not that she's bad because for one time she acts beyond her roots but this movie is just meaningless. It collects all the same, old, abused and boring clichés of French drama as it's about the hollow life of a bourgeois couple: we have their total traits: the housewife, the prestigious doctor husband, the tennis matches, the opera, the on shoulders pull, the successful kids and even if they got all this, they feel empty, they are unable to communicate and they want to add fire to their « poor » life. Sure, every body shares this spleen for a perfect life, a life when dreams come true but on the other hand, i really don't care about the bed stories of the bourgeois. It's all the more painful here that practically all the scenes are totally useless as the characters sits, walks, drives alone and in the silence ! Maybe some appreciate this but sorry I skip it
rowmorg
We watched this slow drama with a mounting sense of bewilderment, wondering what it was really about. It turned out that the neurosurgeon's girlfriend was actually linked to a murder gang that kept elderly men like himself bound up naked waiting for a grim death. This shakes Daniel Auteuil, for whom the young Moroccan woman represented a journey back to his origins. He was able to open up to the young woman in a way that he completely failed to with his wife: a perennial problem with men. Next, she is weeping in her miserable room and giving him a diskette made with her grandmother 20 years earlier. She tells him it's her most precious possession. Next thing, she's lying dead in her bath, suicided. The cops explain to the doctor that she was tortured by his fate, he was being tracked and studied by the gang. At the end, he sits contemplating her voice singing a lovely old love song about "coquelicots" or poppies. It's a haunting film made with loving care and well worth seeing.
robinski34
Before the Winter Chill, a domestic drama from three-time writer / director Philippe Claudel (I've Loved You So Long), is immediately watchable for its leads, casting Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas as husband and wife in a story woven around their relationships with each other and those around them. The tale is reasonably diverting, and there is enough going on to keep the viewer engaged for the running time, but the material does not aim much higher than movie-of-the-week melodrama. This it does very well certainly, and Leïla Bekhti gives an affecting performance, but it's unlikely that you'll be raving about Avant l'hiver (the film's original title) to your friends and family. Enjoy 'Before the Winter Chill' for the central performances of Auteuil and Scott Thomas, then check out Guillaume Canet's 'Little White Lies' for some real Gallic fireworks.
JvH48
I saw this film at the Leiden film festival 2013 (LIFF). This could have been the umpteenth story about a middle aged man courting a younger woman, thereby endangering not only his marriage but also risking the health of his patients while slacking off his daily job as a surgeon. But luckily it is much more, due to some complications interwoven in the script that make it interesting nevertheless.The daily package of red roses that are delivered throughout the running time of the film, seems important and thus are we eager all the time to know who is behind it. In the end we still wonder who is sending the roses, however, but it does not really matter in hindsight as many other sub-plots take over and keep us interested.A possible minus point is the shallow role of the surgeon's wife. She has typically not enough on her hands other than waiting for her husband to come home. Her garden is her only daily occupation that keeps her from complete boredom, so it seems. I had assumed more initiative from her side, as she is obviously not the unlearned and meek kind of woman.All in all, I can only moderately recommend this film. It is not a total failure, however, due to several sub-plots that keeps us interested. But that is all there is. This film ranked a moderate 26th place (out of 55) for the audience award.
