Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

EarDelightBase Waste of Money.

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

qipanzhang I just saw this movie from HBO. I watched through the end without stops. It was a very good movie and I am so surprised the movie has such a low rating. This movie brought us to Paris and it was very charming. The food and atmosphere of Paris is so enchanting. French countryside and exposure of French cultural were so beautiful and delightful. The entire ensemble cast performance was very good.

tomgoblin-44620 NO ONE in this film over the age of 5 fails to horrify. In a variety of ways of course. I kept thinking of words like "Vile" or "Stupid". As a conventional film entertainment, I give it a 1. As an incisive critique, it deserves an 8.But, of course.My takeaway was that this was a brilliant dissection of the French and American upper classes as they interacted. Both were vile and a disgrace to the best aspirations of most civilizations of the past 500 years.If you wrote down on a set of tickets every human weakness you could think of and put them all in a little jar, then pulled them out one by one, you could find an example of each (very well acted) in this movie.I liken it to a very well done Army training film on venereal disease. Professionally done but, disgusting. If this was the intent of the writer/director then they deserve an 10! "A sickly sourness filled the room. The bitter harvest of a dying bloom"* Finally, seeing it so many years later while France is collapsing in a self-induced cultural suicide...it has a sort of historical sting. You can see why French "Elites" have wrecked their country. Self-involvement, decadence and cynical detachment have reached full bloom.It couldn't happen to a more deserving people. I just hope America doesn't go completely over the cultural/moral brink that the French are living out as I write this.But, of course...*Peter Gabriel

SnoopyStyle Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson) is visiting her sister Roxeanne de Persand (Naomi Watts) in Paris. Roxeanne's husband Charles-Henri is leaving his pregnant wife for another woman. Poet Olivia Pace (Glenn Close) hires Isabel to assist her on her tour. Isabel has a very French affair with the married Yves. A family painting given to Roxeanne is discovered to be more valuable than first thought. Charles-Henri insists on a divorce and splitting everything including the painting. Tellman (Matthew Modine) is the husband of Charles-Henri's mistress.Nobody cares. The only rooting interest is Roxeanne because she actually shows a beating heart. Charles-Henri is played with such a robotic unfeeling manner that it's questionable how they ever got married. Even Roxeanne as a character is destroyed after her suicide attempt. She does a 180 and turns into her family where she's sipping wine and discussing alimony with them over lunch. There is no passion in this thing that survives. This is a stereotype of two elitist cultures.The French are callous cold-hearted about love. There is no passion. Love is transactional. The Americans are almost as cold-hearted about love. They care more about the money. They care more about the painting than the marriage. Tellman is the only person with consistent passion and he's a madman. None of it makes for compelling drama. It's a movie about cold people that leaves me cold.There is a light comedic tone throughout the movie but there is no comedy to be had. It is an infuriating movie. It could have survived as a drama only about Roxeanne's divorce. I rather not spend any time watching the very boring affair with Isabel.

writers_reign There's a definite 'curate's egg' feel about this one, not surprising given the melange of French, American and - to a lesser extent - English acting styles tossed in the blender then pressing the button marked 'hope' rather than the one marked 'perhaps not such a good idea'. The plot, such as it is, is kick-started when Melvil Poupaud, scion of an old French family, calls time on his marriage to Naomi Watts, who has (presumably) severed her American ties to live with him - and bear his children - in Paris. To lend support to her sibling, now pregnant again, Kate Hudson planes in from the US and is soon having sex with an arrogant kid, Romain Duris, and an older (55) sophisticated smoothie, Thierry Thermitte who, together with Watts, turns in the best performance in the film. There are other strands, not least the disputed ownership of a painting which Watts imported from her American 'family' home to France, plus parents in the respective shapes of Leslie Caron, Stockard Channing and Sam Waterson. it's all very light but just misses sufficient charm to raise a soufflé.