Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

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.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This movie is pure reality -happening every day every hour even via internet nowadays, how a relationships may develop - first love resulting in marriage with two kids developed into feeling of being strangers,complete break, having to lonely masturbate in the family toilet - soooo sad. After divorce children's' visits one day a week only, resulting in self made meals, it is such an unnatural uncomfortable meeting with one parent instead of both that could be best family time instead. In that loneliness then one parent finding love to a stranger, bilateral attraction, while one partner just enjoys fancy, the other part looks for more, but with that attitude induces the mystery slowly resolving back to reality. It is sooooo moving to watch how dream bubbles disappear slowly slowly, and a tragedy evolves. Such a precious movie, daring performance of both actors and director. The music is gorgeous. Tat movie is one of my ever favorites, OK THE favorite - wow - what a movie..prizes were raining (silver bears in Berlin),no prize good enough for Mark Rylance's outstanding performance (should have been platinum - or star dust, really)- wow

Well I watched this film, and found myself fast forwarding thru the love scenes. They were too explicit, too visual, especial one particular part. It was unnecessary to show that much skin and certain oral acts. There are classier ways to show a love scene. This however felt like borderline porn.Well besides the major flaw mentioned above, this film could have been great. If done in the vein of "Match Point", it could have been a real gem. Terrific story, but clouded by a shoddy script and uninteresting characters. The flashbacks the gentlemen was having were sort of moving, and he did some fine acting. The woman as well, but I just feel with beautiful cinematography, a screenplay that concentrated more on the loneliness the two main characters go through than the graphic sex scenes this film could have been much better. Oh well.Please don't watch this.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I mean real drama. I mean the kind that is designed to turn you inside out rather than merely distract you from anything real. I think this is real. Its clearly meant to matter and designed so. Everyone involved is committed. The actors slightly cross that line about showing sex and therefore let us know that we are meant to take this as real, as intended. And we do.I'm sure it works for some viewers. It didn't for me, and I think the reason is simple. I'm not British. There are three main characters here, involved in a triangle, the tentativeness and purpose of which forms the spine of the story. But they are surrounded by others. Men with men and women with women. These characters I think are meant to define a sort of broken world, a sort of disordering set of forces in which our three are situated. So they are quirky, exaggerated, and because I'm seeing traits that I only see in other British films, they seem to be templates and therefore unreal. They seem to be from a store, that same store where you get eccentric secondary characters for romantic comedies, or that Bristish twist, the self- absorbed "Trainspotting" genre.This ruins the whole effect for me, because they may be real people, but they live in an unreal world, so the story doesn't matter.But there is one thing about this that is remarkable. Its the construction of the narrative.Remember that the whole thing depends on us getting the message that these actors are committed to being real? Our focus character is a woman who is an actress, trying to be real. More, as she in the movie is intent on showing us how to be real, she plays a character who is not only an actress with similar aspirations. But she has a job showing other less "talented" actors how to do the same. Its a really cool narrative fold. The problem with folds is that they are usually outside the narrative, a sort of metanarrative that declares the movie is fake. But you cannot really get much away without folding these days. So this writer has folded directly and openly within the story in a way devised to move the metanarrative away from outside the film to coming from within. Its a character folding, not an actor.Even though this did not work for me, it might for you. And this very clever engineering of narrative makes it worth watching.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

My husband is currently watching this film which we rented, which he seems to be enjoying. Maybe it's just my mood tonight, but I found this film unwatchable. Literally. I had to leave the room -- something I NEVER do when my husband and I are watching a film together. I found it irritating. The characters were so unsympathetic, dysfunctional and frankly boring, I couldn't work up enough interest to care about them, even in a literary sense. As I was watching the sex scenes I thought "I SHOULD be finding this erotic" but I wasn't -- probably because I didn't these like or care about them. (I guess that's the difference between "women's porn" and "men's porn.") I thought the entire mood of the movie was dark, depressing and that the characters had sex just to reassure themselves they were alive. To me, that's sad and pathetic and depressing, not erotic. Hey, call me a romantic.To each his/her own, I guess.Watch it for the sex scenes if you like, but for me, there wasn't much else in terms of interesting plot lines or character. I think it's boring and frequently painful to watch.PS The movie is over. I asked my husband if HE liked it, since he watched it to the end. His answer was NO. He read this review, and he agrees. A waste of time.