Masterful Movie

disgusting, overrated, pointless

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It's tough to decide whether or not to recommend watching Last Love. If you're a Michael Caine fan, you'll probably want to watch him do some incredible acting, but you won't want to watch him in such a sad story. If you happen to like sad movies, you might want to give it a try. But, as much as I love Michael Caine, I could have skipped watching this movie. It was just too depressing.The beginning of the film falls under the "what does it take" category of the Academy Awards. Michael Caine is sitting at his wife's deathbed, and after she's passed away, outsiders come in to try and remove him from the room. He fights them, wanting to stay with his companion as long as possible. I don't think it's possible to watch this scene without bursting into tears, and I'm sure Michael was just as baffled as I was that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar that year. Believe it or not, the rest of the film isn't really any more uplifting. Jane Alexander plays Michael's late wife, and she visits him several times throughout the film, talking to him and giving him advice on his attempt to start a new chapter. He meets a French dance teacher, Clemence Poesy, and strikes up a friendship. The audience is supposed to realize that his unrequited crush is doomed to remain unrequited, because unless Michelle has grandfather-issues, she won't look at him as a romantic prospect. I still think of Michael Caine as how he looked decades ago, so I didn't understand why it was an unrequited crush in the first place.In any case, this is an incredibly depressing film about how a man tries to continue living even though he's lost his life companion. Use your own judgement to see if you're able to sit through it.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to depressing and adult content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

There is no end in sight to curiosity about unlikely couples with decades of age difference. Well here the couple finding themselves in a very hard to define type of relationship consist of the actors Michael Caine, age 78 at the time of the filming, and the lovely and soulful Clémence Poésy, age 29 respectively. This film is quite educational for people who keep wondering what is possible and what definitely is not achievable in a relationship with almost 50 years age difference, and what a couple like this might actually talk about between them and what not. The acting is absolutely world class even in the smallest roles, let alone the lead couple who give their particular situation and the twists it will lead them to amazing credibility. The international production has resulted in many impressive shooting locations beautifully captured on film, yes real film. Both intrinsically sad and optimistic about the power of love in spite of everything, Last Love will leave you in tears but in a good way. Do yourself a favor and see it, you might learn a thing or two about life you didn't know before.

This movie is lushly filmed with a typically gorgeous Paris backdrop, interesting and beautiful camera work and an excellent cast. The somber beginning, as we start to get to know the central character, an elderly man with little to live for after the death of his adored wife, gives way to hope when he meets a young, vivacious Parisian and seems to kindle the desire to continue on. Is it love? No ..., not that kind of love, though there will be those who want something to spark between them. Instead we see two essentially lonely people finding someone else who can provide simple human companionship. The man's flaws begin to be explored with the arrival of his son and daughter after a failed suicide. The purpose of the daughter is beyond me as she barrels in, tries to take over the father's life, chain smokes cigarettes and bounds out just as quickly. We learn nothing from her character. The last third of the picture will drag completely as we continue to look in vain for some explanation for the characters actions. Though the banter between father and son seems on the way to enlightening us as to why they disdain each other so much, there really isn't enough here figure out how they, or we, are ever going to understand how they got to where they are. Mostly both characters engage in tedious whining about who owes who what for past insults. The real kicker is when the girl abruptly falls into the arms of the son when there has been absolutely no indication of any real attraction. The whole thing renders the ending utterly unbelievable and devoid of any real meaning. Story endings are difficult and whoever wrote this one failed miserably.

For some reason, Michael Caine was chosen to play an American old man living in France. He is devastated by the death of his wife and can't cope with it. He contemplates suicide when he meets an interesting and very young French girl who breathes some life in his routine driven drab excuse for an existence. He tries to commit suicide and fails, making his son and daughter to come visiting. The French girl wants to fix everyone's problems, including her daddy and family issues.Up to this point, the actors were well fleshed out, the acting good and the mood, even if boring sometimes, was interesting, feeling like something one might learn from. But towards the end Caine's character becomes more and more erratic. Far from a lovable old man and a great father, the script is trying to force him to become one with the other characters inexplicably making huge efforts to fix him. The ending is inexplicable as well, mostly because after all that effort, it seems really wasteful.Clémence Poésy is very cute, even Harry Potter thought so, and Michael Caine remains a good actor, even if he didn't seem at all the right choice for this role. And I believe this is the part where the movie fails completely: the casting. Caine as an American, with his clearly British accent and his demeanor, I am sad to say, that of an angry bully, not a sad old man as the role demanded, was a horrible choice. I can applaud Justin Kirk trying to not play a funny guy anymore, but you do that in a movie where everybody else is well cast. As such, he was also a weird choice. And Gillian Anderson playing very well her role, I think it was actually right for her, but her character has a few scenes and then goes away.Bottom line: the ending and the casting make this film a failure, in my mind. Besides a few well acted emotional scenes that brought tears to my eyes and some others that seemed like they are going to teach me something about human nature, it turned out to be a bore. Also, the script seemed written somewhere in the past. No one used a cell phone? Really?!