Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

Great Film overall

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I've only just recently started streaming foreign films, so obviously iv'e seen the Hollywood remake of this movie before this one. "Pour Elle" aka "Anything For Her" is a good drama/thriller. The remake clearly copied 90% of this film, i like the remake and i like this original one. This one is more gritty and more harsh than the updated version. I knew the outcome of the story but i still wanted to rent the original, amazon prime video have it available and i don't regret spending money on it.Both movies are just as good as each other, there is one thing that stands out which is the escape scene, in this original version there are aspects mainly at the beginning of the escape scene before they enter the apartment where it is very edge of your seat thrilling - more thrilling than the remake beginning escape scene, however the second half of the escape scene is not as thrilling as the second half of the escape scene from the remake version.Overall, "Pour Elle" is a must-watch. If you like "The Next Three Days" then you will like this French original version. If you don't mind subtitles then this flick is worth renting.

A French thriller. The wife, Lisa, of a school teacher, Julian, is convicted of murder after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their previously quiet, steady life is thrown into turmoil. She is sentenced to 20 years in prison.As well as witnessing the couple's commitment to each other, we see the effect the events have on her son. Her husband bides his time and plans in detail how to free her from prison. His escape plans succeed and they flee to live abroad.A well paced, crafted thriller, that builds suspense and engages us with the characters.

Julien and Lisa are a happy loving couple living quiet, ordinary lives in their quiet, ordinary apartment with their baby son Oscar. Then one evening the doorbell rings, Julien opens the door and their lives are thrown into chaos. Police swarm into the apartment, pounce on Lisa and arrest her for the murder of her boss. Three years later Lisa has lost her last appeal against her 20 year jail term and is finally giving up hope – and giving up on life. She stops taking insulin trying to slowly commit suicide. Julien is a desperate man. He tracks down a notorious criminal who has written a best-selling book on his several successful escapes from prison. And so his plan begins. 'Anything For her' is a typical solid French thriller. There are no sudden twists or turns in a plot that relies on the natural tension of the situation to keep it going. The meticulous planning of the jail-break is compelling as you watch Julien turn his apartment into effectively an operations room. The walls are lined with maps and photographs, with graphs and plane schedules, and with heavily underlined questions such as "Escape Route?" He tells Lisa nothing about what he's doing and begs her to just hang on. He intends to sell her mother's house to raise the money they'll need to start a new life but then Lisa is told she is to be transferred to another prison and so Julien must speed up his plans and raise the money somewhere else. The tension and the pressure of it on Julien is almost unbearable and never lets up. The director is determined that there be no distraction from this, his main focus of the film and quickly shows, practically at the start, what actually happened to Lisa's boss so that that whole aspect of the story is quickly dismissed and forgotten about. It's not an all-out masterpiece by any means but it is a very entertaining, at times gripping film that does exactly what it says on the tin. Vincent Lindon is practically a veteran of these things and forces you to feel real empathy for Julien while Diane Kruger does well with what is really a much smaller part, fully conveying the nightmare of prison life and the physical decline it brings.

Knowing virtually nothing about this film before I went in (I was the only one in the cinema), I was surprised to find that it is a French film, subtitled in English (the cinema billed it as Anything For Her and, from what I could gather using my not-very-good French, the subtitles were about as accurately translated as the title)).In throwaway flashbacks, we learn how Lisa (Diane Kruger from Troy and the National Treasure movies) ends up in prison for a murder which she didn't commit. When, after three years, her legal remedies are all exhausted, she attempts suicide. At this point her schoolteacher husband Julien (Vincent Lindon) decides that his only choice is to break her out of prison and escape to another country in assumed identities with her and their five year old son. In order to do so he must first dip his toe into the underworld. The bulk of the film tells of how he makes and executes his plans.This was an interesting and gripping film, telling an unusual story from an unusual viewpoint. There wasn't a vast amount of action (although the small amount of action was well executed), but that didn't matter: the story itself was a powerful engine driving the film along.Lindon's performance seemed initially rather one-note: on consideration, I think I can see that it was actually rather Gallic, suggesting hidden depths which showed through infrequently. Diane Kruger plays nicely against type, as a dowdy jailbird throughout most of the film.In short, a small film, but very good of its type.