A waste of 90 minutes of my life

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I absolutely loved this film, French films are masters at this type of art. The longing for love the unknown forbidden fruit. Not wanting it yet finding it out of the blue, again metaphorical substances, her pain is real, the stone in her body is real, not attention seeking as her mother would say. Just as painful as her yearning for love, to be loved, to give love, naive, curious... The parents strict in many ways we do not know as to what she went through as a young child, but it forms and shapes her womanhood. Her mind in turmoil, visions, fantasies that are alive as daylight. Twists and turns in the film that left me totally glued as to what is going on with this creature, this beauty, these consequences that are occurring all the time, her loveless marriage, her son... It's the passion of love, lasting a mere moment in a lifetime, and ending so abruptly. To reconcile with herself, in the end finding who she is, finding her inner peace...she is in reality a part of most of mankind.

French actress/director Nicole Garcia (Going Away, Little Lilli, Place Vendôme, A View of Love) has transformed Sardinian author Milena Agus' novel 'Mal di pietre' ('disease of kidney stones'), with the assistance of Natalie Carter and Jacques Fieschi, into a staggeringly creative and hauntingly beautiful film that deals with passion and deep seated imagination. It is another showcase for the brilliant actress Marion Cotillard.Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José (Alex Brendemühl), an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in Switzerland to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Gabrielle is released from the spa, pregnant and convinced André is the father, and the child Marc develops into a fine concert pianist. But even the most beautiful of love affairs can be altered by a mind in need of guidance and the story ends with surprising changes that make us realize we have been a part of Gabrielle's insanity. Beautifully filmed and rich in fine acting, this is a quiet film that seeps into our psyche as we feel the vagaries of a tenuously intact mind. A brilliant film. Grady Harp, July 17

'From the Land of the Moon' tells the tale of Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) who develops an unfortunate - and unreciprocated - sexual obsession with her local teacher in 1950s rural France. Her mother hastily arranges for her to be married off to itinerant Spanish workman José (Alex Brendemühl), who can not even be bothered shaving for their wedding day. Gabrielle resigns herself to a loveless marriage - charging José 200 francs for sex - before she has to stay at a Swiss spa to be treated for 'stones sickness' (not, as you might think, an obsession with Mick Jagger et al, but kidney stones). At the spa she meets aristocratic soldier André (Louis Garrel), with whom she develops a deep (though, to her disappointment, platonic) relationship. But when André leaves and Gabrielle returns to José, how will her experiences have changed her?I spent much of the film trying to work out how old Gabrielle is supposed to be: when the film opens the story suggests she is the equivalent of a sixth form student, but Cotillard, in her forties, hardly looks the part. In other respects, though, she is perfect, conveying with the minimum of fuss Gabrielle's undercurrent of frustration with her lot in life - and the look she gives the man with whom she has ended up in the film's very last shot speaks volumes. Brendemühl and Garrel are pretty much Cotillard's supporting players (after all, neither of *them* has an Oscar!) but both make the most of their parts, again without resorting to over-acting.Subtlety is the watchword in setting the film's period, too: director Nicole Garcia choosing to express it with costumes, interior decorations and cars, rather than beating the viewer around the head with pop songs from the time as other directors might be tempted to do. There no big explosions, no screeching-wheeled car chases; this is simply a film about human emotions - and contains a twist I certainly did not see coming. Well worth a viewing.

Although I knew what I would encounter, I watched the movie. I believe that if I take part in general impressions, I need to make a few words.First, there is a theme problem in the film. So when the film goes to the next scene, it leaves behind the previous problems and problems are accumulating. Naturally the stream is deteriorating. Secondly, the movie contains more than one movie. This is not something that can not be done, but this movie can not do it. This is a mistake made to create a plot twist. Finally, the film is far from cinematography. In the first twenty minutes there are worthwhile images, but then the film leaves it. Despite everything, Marion Cotillard is great again.It is not a film that does not appreciate what you get because you have nothing to gain.