Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Lawbolisted Powerful

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

MartinHafer It's very difficult to classify the genre of this movie. At times, it seems like a comedy, at others a dram and at other, perhaps, a romance. Regardless, it's a strange but enjoyable film.The film begins with Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) going to the wrong office. She is looking for the psychiatrist but accidentally walks into a tax accountants office. She begins pouring herself out to this unsuspecting man, William (Fabrice Luchini) and he's just too shocked to say anything. On top of that, he thinks she might just be a client who needs to get some stuff off her chest. However, before he can set her straight she abruptly ends the session and leaves--vowing to return next week.When the follow week comes, Anna continues talking about her marital problems but, like the previous week, she suddenly changes her mind and leaves. Again, William should have told her he was not a therapist, but she really didn't give him a lot of opportunity.The following week she does not show up. And, instead, William goes to talk to the psychiatrist down the hall. He wants to contact the woman to explain the mistake but doesn't know her name--and the psychiatrist isn't about to break confidentiality to tell him. Where does all this go from here? Well, suffice to say, she does return and both Anna and William come to look forward to these sessions.I think this film works for several reasons. It's unique and charming. Plus the two leads do a very nice job. I particularly enjoy seeing Luchini in films and this the the third one I've seen recently--and I've seen a few others before this and particularly enjoyed him. Well worth your time but the dialog is occasionally rather adult, so it's not a film for your kids or mother-in-law.

lastliberal A stranger walks into your life and you find yourself totally captivated. In the hands of Patrice Leconte this is something worth watching.It is the fourth film of his that I have seen. I watched it mainly for Sandrine Bonnaire, who captivates me as much as she captivated William (Fabrice Luchini).He is an accountant, and she walked into his office by mistake thinking he was a psychiatrist. Even after they admitted they both knew the truth, she kept coming and he kept waiting for her, even shuffling his real clients out the door.A fascinating exchange, full of surprises, and well worth watching again.

roland-104 Patrice Leconte is fascinated by offbeat, enigmatic, eccentric relationships. Most of all, he likes to film quirky love stories. "Monsieur Hire" (1989), was adapted from a Georges Simenon novel about a forlorn voyeur who is obsessed by a beautiful young woman he watches constantly from afar. "The Hairdresser's Husband" (1990)is the story of a drifter, a man with a passion for women barbers that began in childhood, who finally fulfills his dream.In "The Girl on the Bridge" (1999), a down and out carnival knife thrower and a striking young woman save each other from suicide. And in "Felix and Lola" (2001), another carney with dubious prospects is attracted to a seductress with questionable loyalties. Even in "The Widow of St. Pierre" (2000), arguably his best film, although the story focuses to a degree on the connections between two men, their tie owes its existence to the more substantive relationship each has with the same woman.Certain themes keep resurfacing in this corpus. The men are always middle aged, shopworn by responsibilities, personal habits or life itself. The women are attractive, sexy, mysterious and bold. More bold than the men, who tend toward reticence and inhibition. The women also seem more influential, if not stronger. They are able to discern and open up closed places within the psyche of these men, while at the same time the women remain enigmatic to their devoted consorts. A sexual relationship seems less important than the man's fascination with the enigma of the woman, and her ability to evoke hidden aspects within the man.Now we have Leconte's latest offering, "Intimate Strangers." The story revives all the familiar Leconte themes. It even stars Sandrine Bonnaire, who also played the young woman that so captivated M. Hire in Leconte's film 15 years earlier. Here she is cast as Anna, a dyslectic, depressed, mysterious and powerful Parisian beauty who seeks psychiatric help for marital troubles.On the day of her first appointment with a psychoanalyst, she gets the directions to his office wrong and ends up spilling out her problems to an upscale tax accountant, William Faber (Fabrice Luchini, a French comedian), who at first mistakes her for a new tax client. Her husband Marc has withdrawn emotionally from her, Anna tells Faber; he refuses sex or affection. She wants help to restore their former harmony.The plain, fastidious Faber is so retiring, surprised, and spellbound by this lovely woman, that he cannot collect himself enough to stop and redirect Anna, who pretty much runs the conversation and ends by asking for a second appointment, which William reflexively consents to. He tries to square things at this second meeting, but Anna dismisses his claim not to be a doctor by saying she is well aware that not all analysts hold doctorates. After she leaves, Faber dashes off down the hall to consult the real analyst about what to do now. These doings set the stage for an amusing romantic comedy. It's one that takes a few good natured pokes at psychoanalysis. But as events unfold, one might easily conclude that this story could represent an analyst's most enjoyable fantasy, a therapist's deluxe wish fulfillment: having your patient and helping her too, while getting all the good lines, the fees, immunity from ethics charges, and a free lunch into the bargain. My rating: 8/10 (B+). (Seen on 08/17/04). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.

downtek Patrice LeConte's narrations always rely upon the loneliness of his characters and the complicated, hard-won way they connect with and comfort each other. In "Man on the Train" and "The Hairdresser's Husband," the incomparable Jean Rochefort plays the more outwardly gentle, hopeful and whimsical character, trying to establish common ground with his more explicitly troubled and fatalistic counterpart. Those two films end tragically; "Intimate Strangers" permits a more hopeful outcome. The character played by Fabrice Lucini--counter to the otherwise well-expressed views of TrevorAclea--offers continuous surprises with the unexpected expressiveness of his humble accountant's body and face. Look for him dancing in front of the mirror to Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour"; and consider his expression watching a former mistress walk away in the rain."Intimate Strangers" revolves around an interplay of honesty and concealment that will be familiar to anyone who has worked at being a couple. Some characters demand a fraudulent supremacy based on dependency, domination and sadism rather than the balance of power based on honesty, vulnerability and respect that the two main characters--and most of us--need to achieve intimacy. In this wonderful film, full of layered dangers and credible acts of courage, LeConte continues his masterful and immensely watchable exploration of the need and the fear of intimacy. The outcome creates an exhilaration absolutely rare in film, and absolutely admirable.