NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Adam Gai The late director Raul Ruiz has declared that what interested him when making films was the middle ground between traditional narrative and experimentalism. His movie The Comedy of Innocence (2000) is based in a novel by futurist writer Massimo Bontempelli, The Boy with Two Mothers, and recreates as in an unstoppable nightmare the archetypal fantasy of the child that imagines that his parents are not the real ones. The family lives in a strange Parisian house besieged by the remembrance of a dead incestuous eternal grandfather. The father is frequently absent, and the mother- theater designer- is suddenly refused as such by his nine years old unique son. Another mother, the ideal one that in fantasy every child wants to possess, will appear "really" in the world of the movie and in the video that the child shoots in that world. He harasses alternatively the two mothers with his camera. On his side, the director, perversely too, plays the same game with the spectators, moving the camera menacingly. We are introduced into two houses abundant in statues, paintings, mirrors, that duplicate "reality", and revive in us the ancestral fear before images of resemblance (those obvious elements of cinema) and some inanimate objects that seem to earn life. Ruiz has said in an interview that all his features, and he shot dozens of them, have "film" as their theme. The child uses the camera not only for reproducing but for torturing, and the mothers are ready to collaborate providing that the child will choose just one of them ( see the last scene, for instance). The need of possession and the anguish of abandonment succeed in impregnating each one of the characters, driving them to incredible behavior. The supposed legitimate mother (if there is a legitimate identity in the world of this movie) not only tries to recuperate her son, but to become even the fantasized mother. Ruiz plays convincingly with the impossible until a denouement that dubiously gives resolution to mystery. Like the young nanny who when throwing the dice gets the same results, the picture doesn't cease astonishing the viewers.

writers_reign ... and while you're about it save the plot. I am always going to see anything Isabelle Huppert does. She is far and away the finest French actress currently working and few international actresses can touch her but she does have a wilful side and in the last few years seems drawn to anything from off-the-wall (as here) to sleaze (Deux, The Piano Teacher) so fans don't have it easy and given her current track record we can only assume 8 Femmes was an aberration. This is a case of style over content, everything hinges on the unrealistic premise of Huppert saying 'okay' when she should have said 'get a life' as ninety nine mothers out of a hundred WOULD do in similar circumstances. It's not really enough to pepper the cast with certifiable nannys and neighbors because that only makes the SEMI intelligent viewer shout WHY. Why does Huppert continue to employ a nanny/au pair who declines to eat as one of the family and is constantly throwing dice which always turn up 7 and neglecting the nine year old when they are out together. Why, for that matter, does Huppert's brother, a psychiatrist, no less, become disturbed if anyone touches his toys (Huppert has inherited the family home, where she and her brother grew up, from her parents and the brother's toys are still stored there), given that Huppert has, by definition, lived in Paris all her life and that Paris is a very compact city, why is she TOTALLY unfamiliar with other arrondisiments other than the one in which she lives, why, when Huppert, a total stranger, calls on Jeanne Balibar only to find her out, does Balibar's neighbor, who has a key, cheerfully let this stranger into her neighbor's apartment (perhaps 'cheerfully' is the wrong word, given the neighbor's penchant for gloomy predictions. I could go on but you get the picture. As long as we're asking pertinent questions, why did Denis Podalydes, an established and respected actor, agree to what is little more than a cameo, and why, for that matter, even ask a well-known actor when an unknown would do. On the credit side Huppert is tremendous and Balibar not far behind but it's Class Acting that feels like an Acting Class and not a movie.

Framescourer On the face of it, Ruiz has set out to make a psychological thriller. Although it's not as satisfying as a classic piece in that genre, there are compensations. The tensions generated between Huppert and Balibar as women calmly but calculatingly at war over a boy they both claim are compelling; however, in a true European art-house style, Ruiz doesn't give us release of this tension as the women alternately also try to behave compassionately towards each other. The only raised voice is that of Huppert's waking from a nightmare (an uncontested irrational event in the film).In fact, if we follow the title, the film is as little about its thriller skeleton as Jane Campion's In The Cut. Instead it is an intergender psychological study focusing on men. The boy, Camille (Nils Hugon), decides on a practical joke, playing his mother off against an emotionally vulnerable other woman. Both women seem to pander to him rather than scold and this compounds the problem. In the background is an intemperate psychologist (Charles Berling), swift to confront the women in his life - his sister Huppert, the nanny or his pa - and so acting as a symbolic adult counterbalance to the, calm and (we learn) manipulative Camille. It is particularly interesting that, like the father in Henry James' The Turn of The Screw, Denis Podalydes' law-enforcer Father is absent for the duration of the film. Ruiz fashions an Oedipal moment out of Huppert's reaction to his return at the film's close.Read either as a thriller or as a psychiatric essay, this film is ultimately rather disappointing. I'm officially rather fed up with Mme Huppert's screen method, which is too buried and so I'll be looking to see her on stage before I come back to her (European - enjoyed Heaven's Gate) films again. The support is good. Ruiz does the cast no favours though. Quite apart from some poor lighting and some wilfully odd shots, its as if his direction has left characterisation quite out of reach - I'm thinking particularly of Edith Scob's Shamanic neighbour to Isabelle, who acts knowing but communicates bafflement. The set pieces do not link up to a forward driving plot - the tension I have already referred to is not only weakly dissipated but wasted in its directional potential.Want to see a good contemporary French thriller? Go and see L'Appartement instead. 4/10

screamer-13 Recommended for fans of Isabelle Huppert only. Her performance is good as always, but nothing else in the film seems to fit very well. The premise is not at all bad, but the film loses its direction fast. The director only confuses things further by trying to make it seem like a chilling supernatural horror tale, when in reality it is not. Not too painful to sit through, but a waste of time and money nonetheless.