Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

ereinion The title of this film expresses how it is to be a stranger. Sometimes it can be scary to be in a strange town or city, where you know nobody. Sometimes a friendly face is not to be trusted. This I believe is the real meaning and theme behind this film. There are many perils with being a stranger in a strange place. The couple played by Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are about to discover the worst of them.This film by Paul Schrader was adapted from a novel written by Ian McEwen and written for the screen by no one else but the great Harold Pinter. It is then no surprise that it's such a powerful experience to watch it. Christopher Walken hadn't had so many famous villain parts before this but after this, it would become a trademark. He plays a deeply disturbed and obviously sexually repressed American from a wealthy family who lives in Venice with his fragile wife, played equally great by Helen Mirren. They are childless and live alone in a great mansion-like house. They try to make their life (read: sex life) more exciting by finding interesting tourists they can bring into their house and their bizarre world filled with troubled fantasies. Everett and Richardson make their choice. They are an unmarried couple who are obviously in love, but their relationship is not without problems. She is divorced and has children while he has never had children and is not sure if he fits in with her idea of a husband. To cut the long story short, they meet the odd couple while looking for a restaurant one night and at first they seem to bond with them, especially the fragile wife who confesses to them that she is sometimes afraid or at least wary of her husband and his sado-masochistic tendencies. They quickly decide this is not a good couple to be friends with and return back to their hotel, where they start making love like never before. But the sick couple will not be denied of their prey and eventually, things will escalate to a disturbing finale.The story is really well crafted and the characters also. It also helps that all four main actors are really capable in bringing them to life. Music by Angelo Badalamenti is excellent and adds more eeriness and suspense to the already eerie and suspenseful film. This is a character drama which is not for the faint-hearted, especially not the last half hour or so, where things really go bananas. It is a dark and disturbing film about a couple that got lost in a strange city and fell into a trap set by a very sick man. It is a rather unhappy film and just as it seems that things are turning the right way, it again spirals down and comes to a tragic end. It is almost like a Greek tragedy. The lesson? Never trust strangers, especially not smiling ones. The irony is that the villains here are strangers themselves, so the title I think refers to them, not the victims. Their comfort is doing what they do, playing with people.

jacdewit-1 Yesterday (why?) The Comfort of Strangers seen again. A remarkable film , but not a good one. A couple on holiday in Venice to perpetuate their relationship met a brutal man and his enigmatic wife . Rupert Everett is the husband of the couple who made ​​more like his looks rather than his wife and certainly less put on her children . Natasha Richardson - his wife - doing a half-hearted attempt to deepen the relationship. There is no connection and no sex. Until they meet the character of Christopher Walken. Repel them are intrusive behavior and attracts them. Walken is the key to new passion ?The powerful memory I had of the film was in a scene where Walken gives Everett unprovoked a hard punch in the stomach. Everett responding (also) this lethargic . Walken gives him a wink after the stump. This scene is still the best of the film. Walken acts pleasant unfathomable. His expression is attractive false. Walken carries the film to pose. His character - despite bizarre stories about his past - is superficial . The rest of the cast ( Helen Mirren is Walkens woman ) seems to do exactly what the script is . No subtle additions in the game.Director Paul Schrader will have stood for. Schrader at the top of his fame during production was/is known for its powerplay. It has earned him eternal fame as a writer of the scrips Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. In The Comfort of Strangers, he 's tight rein. So tight that even particularly Everett Richardson and insecure on the set seem to be . "So, and not otherwise ," will have Schrader called . It provides for stiff game in a story of the subtleties must have correct.The result is that the crises of the couple does not last and that you wait until Walken again comes into picture. Stock photography Dante Spinotti is beautiful and the pleasant retro look back. The score of Angelo Badalamenti 's trying the audience's attention to keep. It does not help. The Comfort of Strangers in the year 2013 is just a nostalgic experience.Jac. de Wit, jacdwit@gmail.com

ametaphysicalshark "The Comfort of Strangers" sounds superb on paper. Ian McEwan's brilliantly devastating and profoundly disturbing novella adapted by the genius that is Harold Pinter, directed by the excellent Paul Schrader, scored by Angelo Badalamenti, and starring what is essentially a dream cast absolutely perfect for the material. Yet it has a mediocre reputation at best so when I settled down for the viewing I was hopeful but had low expectations.Pinter and Schrader handled two things poorly here- the ending, and the introduction of Christopher Walken's character, Robert. I'm not usually too concerned with faithfulness to the source material but what McEwan did with both aspects in the novella definitely did not require any sort of alteration. McEwan plays with the comfort level of the audience and characters more than Pinter does, causing the story to be even more sinister and disturbing as it develops. Pinter begins the film with a voice-over narration by Robert and we see Robert in flashes well before meets Colin and Mary and takes them to his bar. In short, we are told explicitly that Robert is a villain from the opening of the film, and Pinter also lets him take a bit too much screen time away from Colin and Mary. Walken is excellent in the role, however. The ending, while disturbing and unforgettable in the novella, is a predictable and simple conclusion on film. There's also one or two things that happened during the climactic scene that don't make sense at all within the narrative of the film and which did make sense in McEwan's book. Another questionable alteration.Other than those faults "The Comfort of Strangers" is an absolutely tremendous and amazingly involving film with a brilliant script by Pinter which allows for more nuanced characters and a different approach than McEwan's novella featured, and superb work by Paul Schrader as director, who uses Venice brilliantly her to create mood and ambiance and certainly shoots the film very, very well, with one scene, where Robert is discussing his relationship with his father and sisters with Colin and Mary in the bar which is shot stunningly well. I won't give away Schrader's use of imagery here but it is such a well-crafted scene that the version in my head of the scene seemed terrible in comparison. The film is also shot exceptionally well by Dante Spinotti, a quality cinematographer famed for his work on films like "Heat" and "L.A. Confidential" among others. Complimenting Schrader's work, which is probably his most impressive outside "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters", and at times superior to that, is one of Angelo Badalamenti's most memorable and distinctive scores. I actually had Rupert Everett in mind for Colin well before I even knew this film existed and he didn't disappoint at all in the role. Natasha Richardson was out of left field for me but the casting worked spectacularly well here, and it goes without saying that Helen Mirren is superb as Robert's wife Caroline. Mirren's Canadian accent is spot-on as well. "The Comfort of Strangers" is significantly less heady than its prose version, choosing to function as a thriller with some thematic preoccupations instead. What is surprising about this film is just how well it works as a thriller. The novella thrives on an atmosphere of tense, sinister unease but much of that is derived from Colin and Mary's relationship rather than any plot mechanics. This film is more a traditional thriller but it is tremendously tense, involving, and exciting from start to finish. A quality film, one of Schrader's best as director and some of Pinter's finest film work.9/10

rbrb What a load of pretentious nonsense!An odd couple on holiday in Venice meet an even odder couple and they all share their individual and collective dysfunctionality blah, blah, blah.....The writing is ludicrous and the story mostly ridiculous.If you ever want to go on a trip to Venice, don't see this film as it is portrayed as a slum and mainly under water, and nothing to do at night but walk around narrow, spooky streets, get lost and if you are lucky enough to find a restaurant, the chef will be off sick anyway.Now Rupert Everett the male lead in this film has let us know ad nauseum about his "preferences" so what a strange casting as he is meant to be 'straight' but it is clear he has no interest whatsover in his female co-lead and it sure shows.And others in this picture gush over Rupert as being a "beautiful" man. Personally I find him ugly in the extreme, hideous features, gorky frame,etc.Still some reasonable photography plus OK music so that lifts it by a mark, hence:2/10.