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Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

jmvscotland Re KS-8's review above, everyone is of course entitled to his or her opinion. I disagree though; this really is a modern classic. I should explain the meaning of "the Resistance" since this is kind of relevant to the plot in this movie. During WWII, there were a number of people in those countries that had been overrun by the Germans who, fairly understandably, were not too happy about that situation. The French Resistance was particularly active in trying to do as much damage as possible to the German army. That's all historical context for what follows in this movie. It is a great movie and one which I am glad finally to have found on DVD just today (my birthday).

Bob Taylor Diane Kurys made four films out of her childhood and adolescent experience; that's one of the richest mining for memories in cinematic history. Besides Coup de foudre/Entre nous, there are C'est la vie, Diabolo menthe/Peppermint soda, and Cocktail Molotov (which I have commented on). Kurys's experience is growing up Jewish in post-war France, where the social values are secular but the traditions of the community she belongs to are not.The story of Lena and Michel may seem bizarre to North Americans--they meet and marry on the same day to escape deportation to the death camps--but it must have seemed quite understandable to the people who had to live through that madness. That Michel loves Lena passionately while she finds him dull and vulgar is also normal. These people are making-do with what they've been given, as are Madeleine and Costa, the other unhappy couple.You either love or hate Isabelle Huppert--I must admit to the latter many times over the years, but Miou-Miou is worth whatever the rental or purchase price for this picture is: she's just wonderful; the smallest gesture of her hand carries so much meaning. One great scene has Costa, the world's worst businessman, bent over the sewing machine trying to add sleeves to shirts with only one sleeve that he's bought on the black market; Madeleine stands in the next room working at a sculpture, simultaneously trying to console Costa and quietly make him realize what a mess their lives have become.

KS-8 For years, I've heard glowing praise of this movie....now that I've seen it, I feel the praise is largely undeserved. The movie gets off to a bad start: It's unclear (at least from the subtitled version I saw) where the heck the characters are. It's obviously Europe and some kind of World War II era camp, but that's all I could glean....And in the early scenes with Miou Miou, where her first husband gets shot, it wasn't clear who was doing the shooting and/or why. According to the description on this site, it was the "resistance," whatever that means....(to be fair: perhaps most Europeans in 1983 understood the history without needing reference books, but this U.S. home video viewer in 2002 would have appreciated a bit more historical context)As for the rest of the film....Slow, slow, slow. And with a lot of extraneous elements that never seemed to go anywhere. Frankly, I was hoping for more romance between the two women, which you never really see. You just get Isabelle Huppert's husband being angry all the time. And for the record, I didn't like the way the Miou-Miou character kept insulting her young son. None of these characters were particularly likeable, not even Isabelle Huppert. The ugliness of the characters detracted from my enjoyment of this, too.I suppose this was considered really "avant garde" or something, in terms of subject matter, back in 1983, when it was released. But today it just falls really flat. A disappointment.

bj_lucky The sweetest thing about this film is the portrayal from a daughter's view of her parents' struggles with who they are and their relationships with each other. The ending dedication of the film is quite poignant. This film is a reminder of the ways our lives are thrown together and how that intertwines with the choices we make. This is a bittersweet love story on more than one dimension.