Armand one of films who seduce only for its cast. the story is far to be bad but it is common.the mental insanity, forbidden passion, dramatic choices , the end are ingredients from an old recipes. and the surprises are isolated isles.the basic virtue - the performance of Natasha Richardson as new Madame Bovary . than - Ian McKellen as a Mefisto avatar, dramatic, credible, ambiguous. a decent movie. not extraordinary, maybe beautiful, interesting for a couple of scenes and for memories about another works with same theme. so the important problem is its potential, the impression than it could be better and each member of team is innocent. short, an interesting film. but nothing more.

sports7272 How can anyone say the acting is good in this film?The script and direction were so appalling I defy anyone to make a good job of it.I saw it at the Edinburgh film festival when it first came out and have managed to wipe most of it from my memory.I do remember that the director was sitting right behind me,as he was scheduled to do a Q and A.Needless to say he did a runner before the film finished as most of the audience was laughing hysterically,especially when the mother sniffed her dead child's pyjamas.This is definitely one of the worst films I have ever seen.I know most of the films made these days are complete and utter trash,but they don't pretend to be otherwise,and I wouldn't bother to go and see them.

Jade Noir This movie is scary, sexy, and sorrowful. Just lovely. I was SO sad to find that this was a novel and I hadn't read it first. I will say that this movie is not for everyone. I will also say that it is a work of art. It portrays perfectly that passion, love, and obsession one may feel for someone special literally teeters on the line of insanity. Richardson was classy, closed, and one could feel her entrapment and desire to burst free. Csokas is brooding, feral, and one can tell that despite his unpredictable, dangerous nature, he is capable of -if not, requiring- love and tenderness. While entranced by him, the audience just barely takes register of the brilliantly cunning and manipulative McKellen. He was the true master puppeteer of the story, and all amongst him were tiny marionette dolls to view for entertainment, study psychologically, and eventually destroy what was, sadly, doomed to begin with. Lust is a driving theme in the movie, and that may be off-putting for some, but that is only part of the ride, and I feel that the plot is also very much about the lengths people will go to for love, or at the very least, ridding themselves of loneliness. This may well be one of my new favorites.

sol (There are Spoilers) Beautifully photographed in and around the English and Wales countryside "Asylum" starts off innocently enough with psychiatrist Max Rapheal, Hugh Bonneville, getting the job as deputy administrator of this Victorian era mental institution outside of London. Having his ravishingly beautiful wife Stella and 12 year-old son Charile, Natasha Richardson & Gus Lewis, come along with him Dr. Rapheal quickly rises to the top taking over the day to day operations of the institution with the chief administrator old man Jack Straffen, Joss Ackland, announcing his sudden retirement.Everything at first goes smoothly with Max in charge even though his top medical man at the asylum Dr. Peter Cleave, Ian Mckellen, is a bit resentful of him by feeling that he's the man to run the place not Max being that he's been there your years and Max just for a few days. the bitter Dr Cleave may very well have unconsciously let things get out of hand later in the movie with Max's wife Stella and this dangerous inmate convicted wife murderer and artist Edgar Stark, Marton Csokas.Stella feeling that her stuffed shirted and very proper, when it comes to having wild and crazy sex with her, husband Max isn't up to the job of satisfying her most deepest and sinful desires slowly gravities to the very hot for her and earthy, in the sex department, Edger. Stella's uncontrollable desires for the sexy convicted murderer leads to a number of almost unbearable, for the audience to watch without without feeling that they tuned into an X-rated skin-flick, and wild sexual encounters. This leads Stella to leave her husband and young child and shack up with the later fugitive ,from justice and the mental institution, Edger Stark in this deserted downtown London loft.Edger now free and feeling that Stella is addicted to his both talents as an artist and animal-like magnetism begins to treats her with both contempt and insensitivity in being foolish enough to put up with him. Stella for her part takes all the punches and blows that Edger has to offer, or throw at, her but later falls for Edgers, as well as her, roommate at the loft the caring and sensitive Nick, Sean Harris, who want's to be part of a sexual acrobatic manaja twa, with him as the anchorman, with both Stella and Edger. This betrayal on Nick part leads Edgers to savagely beat him up, and then throwing Nick out of the loft altogether, together with Stella for daring to play around behind him back when he isn't looking.It's later when Stella is rescued from Edger by the London Police that an enraged Edger becomes more and more aggressive and tracks her down all the way to this little town in Wales, where Stella was living with both Max & Charlie, only to be captured again by the Wales Police and put back in the mental institution, from where Edger escaped from, now run by Dr. Cleave. Stella meanwhile is slowly suffering from a mental breakdown that will in he end lead her to let her son Charlie drown in a nearby lake, during a school field trip, with her who's supposed to look after him just sitting there on the rocks and ignoring his cries for help, until it was to late, as he went under for the third time.With her now being a totally destroyed woman Stella herself is institutionalized in the asylum and Stella's only hope now is to continue living is to rekindle her relationship with not her kind and caring husband Max, who had since divorced her. Meanwhile that vicious and manipulating psycho Edger Stark, who himself has been committed to the same place as Stella, has gone completely insane, or mute, in his refusing to talk or communicate with anyone there.With Dr. Cleave pulling the stings he not only tells Stella that her lover Edger is also a patient at his institution, which was totally unprofessional for him to do, he also tells, the now very eager to meet Edger, Stella that he'll be at the annual dance sponsored by the asylum and she can be his dance partner. This was a sick and cruel lie or joke on Dr. Cleaves part that, if that's what his reason was in the first place, instead of helping Stella get over her depression it drove her over the top and lead to the tragedy that happened to her at the end of the movie.