KS-8 For years, I've heard glowing praise of this movie....now that I've seen it, I feel the praise is largely undeserved. The movie gets off to a bad start: It's unclear (at least from the subtitled version I saw) where the heck the characters are. It's obviously Europe and some kind of World War II era camp, but that's all I could glean....And in the early scenes with Miou Miou, where her first husband gets shot, it wasn't clear who was doing the shooting and/or why. According to the description on this site, it was the "resistance," whatever that means....(to be fair: perhaps most Europeans in 1983 understood the history without needing reference books, but this U.S. home video viewer in 2002 would have appreciated a bit more historical context)As for the rest of the film....Slow, slow, slow. And with a lot of extraneous elements that never seemed to go anywhere. Frankly, I was hoping for more romance between the two women, which you never really see. You just get Isabelle Huppert's husband being angry all the time. And for the record, I didn't like the way the Miou-Miou character kept insulting her young son. None of these characters were particularly likeable, not even Isabelle Huppert. The ugliness of the characters detracted from my enjoyment of this, too.I suppose this was considered really "avant garde" or something, in terms of subject matter, back in 1983, when it was released. But today it just falls really flat. A disappointment.

Dennis Littrell (Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)Michel (Guy Marchand) falls in love with Jewish refuge Lena (Isabelle Huppert) at first sight and offers marriage as a way she can avoid being sent to a German concentration camp. She accepts, and although she doesn't love him, they have two children and are still married when we pick up the action again in Lyons in 1952 when Lena is 29-years-old. There she meets the sophisticated and well-to-do artist Madeleine (Miou-Miou) who awakens her to the drabness of her existence as a housewife with a loutish husband who now runs a gas station. The attraction between Lena and Madeleine is very strong, and very threatening to the men, especially to Michel.Huppert's poignant and bittersweet portrayal reminds me of her delicate work in Madame Bovary (1991). There is the same listlessness expressed along with a vague desire for something better out of life, and the anticipation of the sadness that we know will come of such desire. Miou-Miou is sharp and cynical with perhaps a streak of the manic-depressive about her. The love they spontaneously feel for one another is real and beautiful and makes us want it to be fulfilled. But Lena holds herself back because of her family, and then it is the men and propriety that get in the way.Of course this is very French and Lena and Madeleine hold hands and comfort one another while telling each other their innermost secrets including the infidelities of their spouses, etc. (The men have no such communication.) Director Diane Kurys exercises more restraint in showing the physical nature of their mutual attraction than would be displayed today. Lena says to Madeleine at one point, "I want to kiss you," but we do not see them kissing. The most explicit scene sexually is the startling, but delicately expressed, meeting with the soldiers on the train where we discover the full extent of Lena's frustration.This is not quite a great movie. The pace is a little slow in spots and sometimes the focus is not as sharp as it could be. But it is an extraordinarily honest movie, and I'll take that over sharp technique any day. Huppert is not only at her best here, but her exquisite and subtle beauty is shown to great advantage. Miou-Miou is also very pretty of course--this is the first time I've seen her--so I would say her strength of character is perhaps her strongest suit. This is a human tragedy on a small, intimate scale, one that we can't help but feel could have been averted had those involved understood one another better, had they been a little wiser. We've all been there before and so we can share the sadness and the sense of loss.

tdean This is a very moving film. I think I found it more sad than some of the other reviewers. It's really about the decline of a marriage through the incompatibility of the couple.The incompatibility is brought home to the woman by her class, education, style, grace and education. (The sophisticated one, played by Miou Miou is just extraordinary acting). In essence, the sophisticated woman causes the central woman (played by Isabelle Huppert) to realize that her husband is a dolt, and that they share far more than she and her husband. The wonderful thing about the movie is that though the husband is a boob, insensitive and sometimes prone to violent anger, there is no doubt that he slaves for his family, is very humble, and deeply loves his wife and his two daughters - no question about it.We get to see his pain as his wife falls out of love for him, his sometimes violent jealousy of the woman who has made his wife see him differently, and his heartbreak. It's quite profound. Those who say it all ends happily were watching another movie!I loved the periods, the costumes, the settings - from Paris on Liberation Day through the 1940s and 1950s. Although it's the daughter's story, we see much of how the couple earlier met, married and began their married life. You will love it - it's more fast-paced than many French movies, and wrenching.

Gerald-21 This is a wonderful film, the story of two women whose lives gradually become entwined that each can fully bloom. The story of their meeting their husbands, becoming disillusioned with them and then discovering each other is a lovely story. There are problems with the sub-titles in the DVD, so if you were to rely wholly on what you read, the film would not work as well. Overall I enjoyed this film very much. A lovely story of discovery and awakening, with much left to the viewer's imagination, but all the details add to the whole.