burnells For people that think this film is a true story sorry but it is not... Except for the romance between Chopin and Sand the events in the film are mostly fictional the real story of Chopin is much more interesting having said that I have to say the usual depressing enervating dark and austere retelling of this story is totally flipped here, it is energetic bright and even humorous and the pulsating music pulls the viewer into the photogenic haunting French country side perfectly, there are great performances, some bad dialogue aside, but as a whole this is enjoyable and well worth watching it's a bit of fine fluff and there's nothing wrong with that especially if it creates an interest in the actual person's depicted here, even the actual story of George Sands Children and their relationship with Chopin that is almost non existent in the film is very interesting and extremely influential to Chopin in later life... it's not accurate but it's a great fantasy flick which I suspect it was ment to be... this film is best enjoyed with a glass of Hennessy V. S. O. P. Cognac. and a sense of humor.

federovsky It's pleasing to reflect that Chopin and Liszt - the two greatest pianist-composers of all time - were actually good friends rather than petulant enemies as might be expected, and any film about either of them has a bit of a warm glow from that. This film is all about temperament, but mainly that of George Sand rather than the keyboard colossi. To the film's credit they take lesser roles among the other slightly foolish men of Sand's entourage, which includes Delacroix and De Musset.Judy Davis is fabulous as Sand, strident, brittle but womanly. The film is fairly explicit about the gender-bending. "Chopin is not a man, but a woman" Sand's friend the Duchess (Bernadette Peters) tells her, "He has to be wooed". She turns up next day with flowers. It's fun, gossipy and theatrical and hard not to like. Even the performances that don't really work fail in a good-natured way: Hugh Grant as the sickly Chopin does diffidence better than he does intensity, and Julian Sands looks the part of Liszt far better than he speaks it.There's lashings of ironic humour on the absurdity of high art being subservient to base emotion, and the idea that genius has a foot in two worlds, one of them less noble, was well worth playing around with.

Michael Neumann It can be a disconcerting experience watching determined feminist George Sand pursuing such an insecure object of desire after the freethinking French author goes weak in the knees for the heavenly music of young Frederick Chopin. Judy Davis gets plenty of mileage out of Sand's confident iconoclasm (ignoring the low moment when she tries to win the composer's attention by exchanging her trademark trousers for a lacy dress patterned after the Polish flag), and her lively performance goes a long way toward overcoming the inadequacies of a script that is less witty than it would have us believe. For everyone else in the cast it's simply a costume party, and director James Lapine leaves them free to indulge in some shameless overacting (Emma Thompson, in particular, gives a rare irritating performance). The whole thing doesn't amount to anything more than a shallow, highbrow romantic comedy, but at least the music is good, and if nothing else the film helped support the costume design industry for several weeks.

irish23 With such a stellar cast and interesting subject (not to mention high marks on this site), it seemed this picture would be a delight and a treasure. Instead the plot is very short, tediously dragged out by the repetition of the same scenes over time: The Publisher's Room, The Ex-Lover, The Duel, The Come-On, The Visit. The best part of the film, where Emma Thompson delights as a daffy duchess, has no relationship to the rest of the picture. Themes are begun but never finished, and as the end credits ran, I cried out loud, "That's *it*?" I was willing to put up with the repetition in the hopes that the ending would somehow tie up the loose ends or show character development, but instead it was just plot, plot, plot. The actors played their parts well (I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of Grant's performance) but this is a film of no texture or depth. Definitely no reason to see it again.