Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's 1972 Marrakesh. Julia (Kate Winslet) moves from London to Morocco with his young daughters Bea and Lucy. The girls' father has another woman in London. They struggle waiting for the father's check to come in. Julia falls for acrobat street performer Bilal (Saïd Taghmaoui). She goes to study in Algiers with Sufi mystic Ben Said.There is a meandering pointlessness about this movie. It doesn't have enough exotic style. The movie doesn't tap into a child's wonder. It doesn't have tension of surviving in a foreign land. Kate Winslet looks downbeat which somewhat fits her character. She may want to be someone looking for spirituality but she strikes as someone self-obsessed running away from her troubled home. She's more about her love life than taking care of her children.

Any movie that Kate W appears in, is a movie I want to watch. I just adore watching her face....Kate is a Hollywood superstar, yet she comes across as "real".But anyway. I really did enjoy this movie. Life is a search for something and it was fascinating to watch a young woman go to such lengths to find her truth. Her kids gained much from being "dragged" along, but who in their right mind would risk putting their children in such potential harms way?I've traveled a lot and there is nothing as exciting as being in an exotic place, in a strange culture - the hint of danger and then the exhilaration when you make it out. Watching this move resonated.Morocco was indeed portrayed as a fascinating, beautiful place to visit. I'd wonder these days would it be as welcoming as this movie suggests. Wouldn't it be wonderful to find out? The part where she lost her daughter brought back the time we thought our young daughter had caught malaria in India. Thankfully she hadn't as we discovered after a trip to a hospital in Hong Kong (an experience in itself). We brought our kids to India to teach them something extra about what it really means to be human on this earth. However what a horrible feeling it was when we thought it was at the expense of their health. We got away with it and learned our lesson.I loved this movie, - the kids acting was superb, Kate was a joy to watch as usual, the location was stunning and the soundtrack makes me want to go out a buy the CD.

Not your typical "chick flick", this Kate Winslet drama is at sometime a drama and other times a coming of age movie with Kate on the sidelines. Although she is the star of the movie and see on the box cover art of the movie and poster, she is not the main character of the story. The real stars of the movie are two very young actors Bella Bella Riza and Carrie Mullan. Both girls are very good actors and have wonderful screen chemistry. It is there story that fuels many interests. While Kate Winsley teases the audience from time to time with her body (nude) it is the innocence from Bella and Carrie that make the movie interesting and watchable.

While I can understand the negative comments which abound regarding this film, I feel sorry for the nay-sayers. They have missed the point of the film. Midway thru my first viewing, I realized that my discomfiture with the film's plot while being inundated with exotic images, colors, and sounds (AND the shenanigans of two incrediby believable young ladies) was a perfect parallel to Julia's escape, frustrated spiritual quest, and self-imposed flighty existence abroad. MAGNIFICENT!Splendid casting and acting by an eclectic ensemble of professionals and locals! Kate Winslett has a certain je-ne-sais-quality which is reprised in the intelligent flightiness of her later (2001) role as the young Iris Murdoch.If you love world music - especially the exoticism of North African rhythms, vocalizations, and instrumentation - this film will be as much a feast for your ears as for your eyes. Even the interspersal of well-chosen western pop hits works to advance the on-the-edge/off-balance feeling of the entire film. This is cinematic art at its finest! While not for everybody, this is a film for those who wish for more than simple, passive "entertainment."