Very well executed

Please don't spend money on this.

Disturbing yet enthralling

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Rather dull and disappointing. A man and woman meet and have a one night stand during a Parisian mass transit strike. It might be a tad more interesting if we knew a single thing about either of these people, but it's all kept very anonymous (we know that the woman is moving in with her boyfriend, but we don't know anything about the guy, who embodies the physical stereotypes that won the French that offensive, amphibian slur). With such a paper-thin scenario, the film doesn't seem like anything more than the sexual fantasy of a very unimaginative woman. You know, meet a handsome stranger and have no-strings-attached sex during which the guy does all the foreplay stuff, takes his sweet time and after which he doesn't take you for granted. There are no real emotions in the story, so Denis lets the music pick up the writing's slack. The film-making is pretty good, but also fairly cliché modern European cinematics. Denis has yet to impress me much.

The traffic jam sequence alone stands as an amazing and lyrical study of the rhythms of stop and start driving. The two lovers are so anchored in the magnetism of the present. This movie is a homage to human nature, and sexual attraction consummated. Also, I absolutely love that the film accepts and cherishes the moment as the lovers do. It's very French.

This is more a comment on what I have read above, here, then on the film itself. However, to start with the film: I enjoyed it deeply, mostly as a kind of cinematographic painting, rather than as a story.The shooting is sometimes breathtaking, the camera very close upon the actors. Even the love scenes,in general often boring, are lifted to a higher level of "beauty" by this method. Associations, minds wandering, it is all there.... and the locations are more French, than most French people will realize. That hotel room, as a tourist I have seen so many run down hotel rooms, these views looked very familiar. Now my comments on the negative criticisms above: of course dozing away in a little "nap" is understandable . I dozed away for 5 minutes too, during the opening scenes in the traffic jam. But the lack of understanding of different kind of film making, of which this is a fine example, disturbs me. Poor movie-goers, not knowing any better, maybe too much influenced by the monopoly of Hollywood blockbuster and video production? What a pity. Or is it my age, having developed my taste in cinema in the 1970s , when it was normal to go and see a Fellini, Chabrol, or a Fassbinder around the corner here....And the Jaws and Rambo(s)were not so overexposed as a hype as they would now be.(see the Matrix-III drama). Be glad this is still made. Anywhere.

i love the french cinema, i am not bashing this film because i havent seen alot of foreign films but they have copied the american film industry and made a worthless clone of previous french films. okay maybe i am a little to hard, but when i watch a film i expect certain things and so it should be advertised as an experimental film. there is no drama just two people who have an affair in a hotel, so theres a little mood going on; a night, a transit strike. and to top if off there's even a director's commentary, about what? two people who meet with hardly any dialogue and hardly any chemistry? the dialogue is so muted at times that i couldn't even practice my french. i am so angry after watching this, a film that shouldnt even have been made.