Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The recently deceased Raoul Ruiz was certainly an extremely idiosyncratic director, whose films did not look like anyone else's. Sometimes his experiments could go disastrously wrong ("That Day"), but other times they were fascinating to follow ("Shattered Image"). I think "Comedy Of Innocence" comes closer to the second category. I like this film....but don't ask me to tell you why! Ruiz comes close to doing for cinema what the "abstract painters" did for their art; he fills the screen with "unexplainable" (as even he himself admits) details (e.g., the rolling dice that always comes out the same) that somehow work even if you don't understand their meaning. In the meantime, the main story of "Comedy Of Innocence" is actually quite straightforward, if you pay attention to it; that doesn't mean it's not extremely weird, though! Both female leads give exceptional performances, but extra praise must go to the little boy - undeniably one of the best child performances of the last decade at least. Watch this film when you're in the mood for something you can't quite describe with words. *** out of 4.

The late director Raul Ruiz has declared that what interested him when making films was the middle ground between traditional narrative and experimentalism. His movie The Comedy of Innocence (2000) is based in a novel by futurist writer Massimo Bontempelli, The Boy with Two Mothers, and recreates as in an unstoppable nightmare the archetypal fantasy of the child that imagines that his parents are not the real ones. The family lives in a strange Parisian house besieged by the remembrance of a dead incestuous eternal grandfather. The father is frequently absent, and the mother- theater designer- is suddenly refused as such by his nine years old unique son. Another mother, the ideal one that in fantasy every child wants to possess, will appear "really" in the world of the movie and in the video that the child shoots in that world. He harasses alternatively the two mothers with his camera. On his side, the director, perversely too, plays the same game with the spectators, moving the camera menacingly. We are introduced into two houses abundant in statues, paintings, mirrors, that duplicate "reality", and revive in us the ancestral fear before images of resemblance (those obvious elements of cinema) and some inanimate objects that seem to earn life. Ruiz has said in an interview that all his features, and he shot dozens of them, have "film" as their theme. The child uses the camera not only for reproducing but for torturing, and the mothers are ready to collaborate providing that the child will choose just one of them ( see the last scene, for instance). The need of possession and the anguish of abandonment succeed in impregnating each one of the characters, driving them to incredible behavior. The supposed legitimate mother (if there is a legitimate identity in the world of this movie) not only tries to recuperate her son, but to become even the fantasized mother. Ruiz plays convincingly with the impossible until a denouement that dubiously gives resolution to mystery. Like the young nanny who when throwing the dice gets the same results, the picture doesn't cease astonishing the viewers.

Ariane (Isabelle Huppert) mother of young Camille has a frustrating problem on her hands. Her son says that she is not his real mother and that his real mother lives in another part of town. Also he insists that Ariane take him to her. What has happened to parental control? Mother and son seek her out. Her name is Isabella ( Jean Balibar) and she had a son Paul the same age as Camille but he was lost in a drowning accident. From this moment on Isabella seems to take over insisting Camille is Paul and Camille insisting that she is his mother.It's very unlikely to happen in real life and the whole set-up is rather laughable. Things get worse when Isabella moves into Ariane's home to be near her so-called Paul. While there she tries to seduce Georges. "Why are you doing this?" he asks".....I need a father for my son" Because Isabella is so difficult to get rid of, family and friends suspect she could be a witch. Need I go on?The acting is excellent throughout. Huppert so gracious and serene, and Balibar well cast as the post-traumatic mother with her ever too ready smile. The dialogue is strange. Many sentences are unfinished. Many idea are not resolved. There is a vague feeling of inactivity and helplessness. The au pair is strange and loves to play the dice. The whole house is littered with busts of men and women so weird-looking in the shadowy light of evening. Great for atmosphere but surely difficult to live with. No wonder the household was a trifle mad.One scene tends to send shivers down one's back. It's when Isabella decides to re-enact the drowning of her son by dunking Camille off the side of the barge. She is completely crackers...quite pathetic really.Camille's favourite plaything is a video camera which he likes to poke into everybody's face. It is said the camera does not lie and in this case what is captured on video happens to resolve the situation.

Story about two women both trying to persuade a confused young boy that she is his real ‘mommy'. The viewer is only shown as much as the boy's actual mother throughout the film, leaving us as confused to the reality of the situation as she.Huppert gives a great understated performance as the real mother, desperately trying to hold on to her son, who's slipping out of her grasp, and the two child performances are fantastic.The underlying anxieties of the characters boil over every now and then into some slightly chilling scenes, with the complex storyline making even the minor characters interesting to watch (in an almost ‘film noir' style).The score seems slightly ‘over the top' at times but this just adds to the films strange sinister feel.7.5 out of 10