A brilliant film that helped define a genre

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

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.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I like artsy films for the simple reason that they make me think. And Brownian Movement's point to ponder is, I believe, what sort of mental illness creates such a closed personality as Sandra Huller's character. At least, that's what I think it is. Such a study requires character development and dialogue that leads to discover exactly what makes the lead character tick. Instead of dialogue we are treated to long silences between characters or without characters in empty bedrooms or bathrooms. Whatever dialogue exists is in such basic English or French that it made me wonder if the scriptwriter was fluent in either language.Any action that takes place between the sterile room or scenery shot is similarly sterile. The sex scenes are so devoid of feeling that they can only be classed as porn and not well made porn at that. The only compliment I can pay part 1, where most of the sex takes place, is that it answers a burning question that must be on every movie-goer's mind: Do German actresses have Brazilians? If Sandra Huller is a typical example, apparently not.Not recommended unless you need to experience terminal boredom.

I found this film unsettling and unsatisfying--but that is exactly the point! For it deals with a character so flawed, one must accept the uncomfortable reality that these profound personal deficits will never (realistically) be resolved.Which leads the husband to ask the pivotal question in the entire film: "But is it enough?" Clearly he is in great pain as he wrestles with this quandary in which he finds himself stuck.Max married this woman who APPEARED to be a highly successful, beautiful woman physician. But marrying across different cultural lines can be tricky to ascertain authentic personality vs. unfamiliar social customs. When newly in love, we have a blind spot to deficits in our partner and easily rationalize them away.Sadly, this woman's actions--and subsequent reactions--reveal her personality has suffered from arrested development. She is a Narcissist who doesn't care how her actions affect those who love her. Gratifying her ego trumps all other considerations.She never makes ONE display of empathy or compassion--not once does she even frown or show appropriate discomfort (while her husband cries in bed..). Her affect and behavior are HIGHLY abnormal. (Also, note that she is NOT primarily a clinical MD, but rather a researcher; this has allowed her deficit in compassion to slip through the cracks).It's a social statement on how highly we value physical beauty and academic achievement--so much we might miss the person inside is incompletely formed(!).In the final scenes, her husband realizes the extent of her deficits and must weigh two traumatic alternatives: leaving her (mother of his three children) or staying with her (denying him a compassionate, sensitive partner he desperately wants and needs). It's a very grim prospect for Max, and he knows it. Coming from a traditional Indianbackground, I infer that he will choose to stay with her for the sake of children and social pressure.The film leaves us somehow feeling "ripped off" and unsatisfied as viewers--but this is by design because they mirror Max's reality. There will be no resolution of the core problem, only a lifetime of painful coping. Ultimately, he will have to decide if indeed "it is enough"---or not.

Charlotte rents a secret apartment. She lives with Max and their son Benjamin in Brussels. She's a researcher professor and she takes some of her male patients to the secret apartment to have sex. She encounters one of those men later and violently attacks him. She goes to therapy with Max and she loses her license to practice. Next, they're in India with the new addition of twins but it's not as good as it first appears to be.There is little dialog especially with the large number of sex scenes. It's a quiet movie. My main problem with that is the lack of emotions for much of the movie. Sandra Hüller plays the cold lead character. She never really lets the audience into the character. Nanouk Leopold is the writer/director. In between the sex scenes, this is a character study movie but it doesn't necessary do a good job. There are little snippets of insight but a whole lot of nothing.

Insufferable longueurs that test the patience to breaking point, posing as artiness. Complete failure to supply backstory so that we actually know nothing about the characters while pretending to think about them. Baffling behaviour by a medical doctor --- well, that's understandable enough, considering what they endure to achieve their licence. But that behaviour is never explained, and the character says smugly that to explain "would only make it worse". Since she had sexual intercourse with men selected from her hospital's patients, she loses her licence to practice and she and her man and their children head off to India, where nothing further happens at all. I could not understand why they spoke English, in rather sketchy accents, and why the French in the movie was not subtitled. The whole thing was so anti-audience and so extremely uningratiating that I felt totally uninvolved and not motivated to watch, which is a feeling evidently shared by the vast majority of humanity. How can someone do this to European cinema? How could the Dutch pay for it?