That was an excellent one.

Great Film overall

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I think it may bloody well be. Although it's hard to be sure, since he was a very prolific director and much of his work still remains unavailable or hard to get on DVD or even VHS, it's certainly far worse than anything else I have seen by him so far. It's quite obvious that he was nothing more than a hired hand for this film, and had no real personal involvement in the whole project. He tries a couple of his camera tricks, but he cannot bring the ASTONISHINGLY pointless and empty script to life. The fact that there are no user comments for this movie since 2004 (!) is an indication that it's destined to be buried and forgotten, even by Ruiz devotees. The photography is beautiful and Laetitia Casta looks EXQUISITE and gives a very good performance, but I still felt tempted many times to just shut the movie off and be done with it. I didn't, but only because that's my unbroken rule. 0.5 out of 4 stars.

Despite the unquestioned talent of Raul Ruiz, this movie is an unqualified disaster. The plot drifts aimlessly, tv-series like, coupled with inadequate acting and over-elaborate voice-over in order to further the "action" in an ad-hoc manner. Practically very little of any importance actually happens, even less of what occurs on the screen is dramatically convincing in this terminally unexciting journey of a manipulative young girl and her encounters in rural France of the 19th century. Vacuity disguised as ambiguity or worse, profundity. Good cinematography though, but there are far better literary adaptions done recently such as Assayas' "Les destinees sentimentales".

This story is about an attractive manipulative little tramp who gets involved with a wealthy couple,the man played by John Malcovich.Most of the movie follows this situation and the couple's behaviour is so mysterious that the only resaon i kept watching is to see how this is resolved or explained,which never happens.After that the movie goes on but i was already bored and i never cared for the rest which is even more boring.Too bad for the beautifull photography, especially of the french countryside.

There is much hype surrounding the release of les Ames Fortes in France due to the starring debut of Laetitia Casta as the main character.We can understand very well what has appealed to the 23 year-old model: the movie, freely adapted from a Giono novel, tells the story of a peasant girl who will discover and use her personal attraction on men and women as she goes to town.What could have made a good story turns very boring as Ruiz lacks a sense of tempo and seems unable to craft a good end to the movie.This movie is not worth two hours of your time, even if you are a Casta fan.