Purely Joyful Movie!

Am I Missing Something?

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

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

Even the fantastic Juliette Binoche cannot save this too jazzy editorial self stimulated contemporary cotton eye mixture of noir bluff meets arty intentions without a heart or a handshake Jeez, I need a beer and a good nights sleepSome times expectations just ruins your evening. Putting the DVD into the mac was my biggest mistake tonight.The story never evolved. The plot was not visible. There was no master plan. Only a director trying to make an impression on other directors, pure jazz without a boiling kettle…My advice: buy some popcorn and watch Kieslowski

The only thing remotely exciting in the first half of this movie was if and when the sexual tension between Irène (Juliette Binoche) and David (Tom Riley) would end in a tryst between the sheets before one or both of them were killed by William Pound (John Turturro), a poetry spouting psycho.But then, David's half-sister Orlando (Sara Forestier) appears to hate him and all Americans so much that they will end up together. Who knows? There sure isn't anything else going on as we wait to see if Elliott (Nick Nolte) knows about 9/11.Quelle surprise! The winner is..., and it only took 85 minutes of the movie to get there! The conversations between Irène, Orlando and David kept the movie interesting until the predictable end.

Forget the obvious sources of annoyance: the fat and ugly girl, Binoche's toothless simpers and cigarillos, impossible characters, absurd pomposity passing for dialog, obsession with incest, plot holes, cookie-cutter stereotypes, annoying camera-work, poor direction, lame acting—the worst part of this film is the premise, which is that the older generation, in the form of a dynamic and responsible French-American duo, will teach the younger generation, in the form of a passive and irresponsible French-American duo, to get along. As if.They want me to write some more. I will. Don't waste your time on this tripe. The whole movie I was just hoping for the characters to die.

I am an American student studying in France right now, and this is the first foreign film I've seen here. It was a great movie, and was easy to follow for a person with minimal French experience (one of the main characters is American, and whenever the other two main characters are around him they have to speak English, a plus since it helps you catch up on all the french bits you didn't get!). It did have a few artful elements, a few gruesome visuals, but it worked. The use of poetry, silence, out-of-focus visuals, etc. was great, it made the feel of the film better than I had expected. Intreaguing storyline, great characters.All in all, I recommend the film.