roninthewild Luckily, I didn't read the critics first, as I often do.The movie's rhythm is subtle and ultimately powerful. Big surprise is the performance of Alex Brendemühl as Jose, unforgettable. It is a story of love that can stay with you a long time. Bravo, Nicole Garcia.

caramia2002 So many negative reviews, esp the Metacritic reviews! What movie were they watching? Guess it is a love/hate kind of movie.Tour de force acting by all. This could have easily turned melodramatic in other hands, esp with Gabrielle's state of mind, but Marion Cotillard's acting skills worked a wonder, as did Nicole Garcia's directing. A beautiful, if melancholic, love story. Gorgeous locations and photography, in the Alps and by the sea. The sound was spectacular and nominated for a Cesar award. It seemed like the ambiance was recorded while filming, instead of the usual Foley artists coming in to re-create the sound later. I think they did Foley some things, like footsteps, but the important scenes were recorded live. That is so rare; I felt like I was there, as I was when younger. If I am wrong, then outstanding Foley work! The music was perfect for the mood. Wow, I didn't even realize it was so long. It never felt like it. Sparse dialog and much of the film is done via feelings. When that is done so well it is truly a treat not many can pull off. Be sure and catch all the dialog, though, or you may not get it. I tried to guess what 'twist' could possibly happen, as I had read some reviews and knew there was one, but I was wrong (although mine was a good one!). It is rare to be fooled by a film these days! I feel strangely uplifted just now after watching this film, for some odd reason. Perhaps it is that I feel like I have just had a trip to Europe, or I was so immersed it was truly an escape and a journey. Enjoy!

ajdasostaric Gabrielle, a stunning embodiment of 1950s Provence hysteria in full HD, yearns, craves and longs. Her oozing desire is disruptive to those around her and excruciatingly painful for her to bear, pushing her into silently abundant jouissance beyond words, which passes through her body in cramps of both pain and pleasure. Bearing such free-floating desire in turn makes Gabrielle barren - her wandering womb (the ancient Greek explanation for hysteria) refuses to stay attached to one place and nurture a fetus, conceived in what Gabrielle perceives a loveless marriage with Jose.Diagnosed with kidney stones as the scientific explanation for her ailments, Gabrielle is subsequently sent off to a mountain resort, one with uncanny ability to dive into the hemispheres of the unconscious mind, strangely resembling Mann's Magic Mountain, thus allowing Gabrielle to spill her desire over reality itself, over time and memory as she meets a charming young man, physically and emotionally absent enough for her to project her longing onto him, for him to play a phantasmatic figure in her own monodrama of Wuthering Heights. She can finally live her jouissance fully and completely by bringing her unconscious phantasies to life as the object of these phantasies, on the other hand, slips into death. The love scene portraying the perfect union comes to stand for a breathtaking example of how the mechanisms of trauma, repression and narcissistic loss (melancholia) work. The trauma of loss (not of the man Gabrielle thought she had loved, but of her own narcissistic self in and with his death) becomes repressed and another scene happens in Gabrielle's mind instead, which secures linearity of Gabrielle's historic self. She can only come to decipher this event years later via the narrative of the silent Jose, whose silences had been nurturing silent gaps in Gabrielle's memory until she was finally ready to bear them. Until she was finally ready for a dialogue. Until she was finally ready to hear Jose speak his story. This film is a remarkable narrative of a ruthless abundance of feminine desire that longs for a language to speak itself, and take ownership of the ambivalent continuity of self, which is all but linear. Cotillard is exquisite in this role, and so is the cinematographic gaze following movements of her wandering/wuthering womb.

GUENOT PHILIPPE I will be honest, I did see this film because it is directed by Nicole Garcia, one outstanding female French director, the best I guess. She has a very sensitive way of filming. So, I did go to see this film without hesitating. And of course I don't regret it at all. Marion Cotillard, whom I don't particularly appreciate, is at her best here. Although I don't crave for her, she is a damn good actress, but sorry, I felt a little emptiness here, I don't really know where. Something missed somewhere. The actors and actresses around her are flawless, but I persist on my opinion. I don't think that's a matter of directing. Not with Nicole Garcia. Maybe because this kind of scheme has already been told a hundred times before. But it remains a good film.