05 November 2010

Ennui fou

Partir (Leaving)

Crit
In declaring her interest in seeing this, the person who joined me declared herself a sucker for the French infidelity genre. Afterward, she declared it too determinedly (and deterministically) French, but my thoughts (unoccupied by anything on screen) as I watched it were that except for the language and the look of the villages, this seemed drearily, drably American, like a poor imitation of Douglas Sirk, steeped--nay, stewed, fairly Crock Potted--in predictable melodrama.

Kristin Scott Thomas is peerless, and Yvan Attal as her necessarily horrible rich husband and Sergi López as her necessarily charming working-class lover both do what they can with the material, but what's to be done? The sex scenes are sexy, I'll give it that, but I'm sorry, sex is not enough. Surprise me just once--give me something to react to, something to think about. Who knew the French could be so dull?

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