Best movie of this year hands down!

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"Forty Shades of Blue" features Rip Torn as an acerbic, hard-drinking music producer in Memphis who, though greatly beloved by his fans and the people in the industry, is viewed somewhat differently by those who know him best. Despite his advanced age, he has a gorgeous live-in girlfriend, Laura (Dina Korzun), whom he met while on a business trip to Russia and, even though they seem to be reasonably devoted to one another and their relationship, Laura is becoming increasing morose as a result of his constant philandering. When Alan's married son, Michael (Darren E. Burrows) - who has reasons of his own for resenting the man - comes from California for a visit, he and Laura enter into a secret love affair that forces her to finally question her commitment to Alan and to perhaps cut the chords - both obligatory and emotional - that bind her to him.Although the script does an effective job capturing the tensions simmering just beneath the surface of the story, the plot itself seems too conventional and too underdeveloped to engage the viewer completely. Still the characters are complex enough and the performances sufficiently layered to at least hold our interest throughout. Torn is particularly good at creating a character whose amiability and likability on the surface mask a callousness and mean-spiritedness below.This is a subtle, if not exactly gripping, study of the compromises we make - and the choices we come to regret - in our effort to avoid loneliness and to find meaning and happiness in life.

Not the movie, but rather this review.Dorothy Kilgallin once famously wrote the shortest review on record of a Broadway play: "The House Beautiful" is the play lousy.I'm going to top her in brevity:"Fourty Shades of Blue" blew.My friends, it was an endless soap opera wherein well-dressed characters with a clean place to sleep and full bellies, along with servants to do the sh*t work and apparent good health, mope around and screw up their lives.Nobody appreciates what the others have done for them, nor their blessings from On High. They're bored, as was I attempting to stay awake watching them.In recent years, moviegoers have benefited from an obsession with pace by directors, resulting in many good scenes sacrificed on the altar of retaining viewer interest. Some appear on Deleted Scenes reels once the DVD comes out.This depressing tear-fest just ambles along self-indulgently, ending not far from where it began, and robbing the viewer of an hour and 47 minutes of his or her life in the process.If you get the DVD from your library (don't even think of wasting good money renting it), you'll be "treated" to a companion short by the same director, wherein an arrogant codger wheels and deals from his hotel bed in Russia, while apparently getting a little young artist 'tang on the side. I dunno. I watched the thing three times, but couldn't pay attention to it. The Beatle-coiffed sexagenarian was following a leggy pianist through the subway, and he might have scored. He looked happy enough the next day.

I really enjoyed this film and think it deserved the Sundance Award.I think its strength lies in telling a story about someone who is normally overlooked and considered uninteresting and unworthy of being the subject matter of a film. Supposedly from the outset we see Laura as the air-head wife that Alan, a successful and famous older husband, has presumably 'bought' in Russia. She fulfills all of the stereotypes associated with such a transactional affair - being younger, attractive and seemingly rather stupid and mute.This would be the case if it wasn't for the subtleties of their married relationship and the feeling that although Laura's reasons for being with Alan are largely financial, there is a level of love between them that is real. She is ashamed of him when he openly philanders with other women and does care about him. There is the feeling that her love in the end is only being stifled by his refusal to treat her as an equal, not that this was necessarily the way that their love started out in the beginning.Without this complexity it truly would be a rather bland story. Her drunken philandering is entirely understandable in this kind of scenario, and helps demonstrate her inner conflict, not only as a reaction to Alan's behavior but as a desire for her own satisfaction and freedom.The conclusion of her coming to realize that she cannot carry on living a shell life, devoid of true love resulting from a partner's genuine respect for her in thought and deed, is a universal lesson on love brilliantly explored in this story.In the end Laura comes across as the most morally sound and sympathetic of all of the characters, despite appearances. Great acting throughout. Great ironic dialog. Really great film in my book.

Film-making with such an eye for detail and nuance is rarely to be seen in America and I'm overjoyed that the Sundance committee stepped forward to recognize it. Forty Shades of Blue is a fascinated witness to heartbreak and refuses all melodrama, all sentimentality in favor of fully lived characters that are shocking in their naturalism---the Russian actress in particular is astonishing but what is even more astonishing is the subtlety with which the director observes her. It is the most careful portrait of loneliness I have ever seen.Unlike most directors who point us in every frame at their star or their theme, Sachs--like Robert Altman--often points out details and people of the setting (Memphis) so that we are quite sure we're not seeing actors at all, and the effect is not the closed-room feel you would expect of a love triangle, but a place and time fixed forever by the lens. Ira Sachs has coaxed great performances from his actors, his hometown and the musicians who perform like a Greek chorus throughout. It's quite a masterpiece.