robertsand-89729 Tight, intelligent, witty, original. One of Hartleys very best films perfectly executed.. The culmination of his craft.

kintopf432 It's very difficult to review a Hal Hartley movie after just one viewing. Like the best directors who walk the line between the avant-garde and the mainstream (David Lynch and Peter Greenaway are two others who come to mind), he makes films that require at least one and probably several additional viewings to properly absorb things. If you're willing to give his style a real chance, man, can he be a delightfully strange talent. In his early films at least, he combines brittle, talky screenplays, full of literary allusion and rhetorical question, with poker-faced performances and sudden moments of surprising physical comedy. Usually these elements come together around a story of genuine emotional resonance, with `Trust' perhaps being the finest example.`Surviving Desire' has all of these things. Where it fits into the overall scheme of Hartley pictures is hard to say, as I've only seen it once. But compared to his other early work, I found it a bit on the precious side, even for him. The academic setting gives Hartley free rein to indulge his penchant for literary reference, and there are times when you wish he was dealing with `simpler' people, as he does so well in `Trust' and `Simple Men' and even `Amateur.' Self-absorbed, world-weary, hyper-intellectual Jude occasionally seems to be a prototype for the satirical title character of `Henry Fool,' but without the irony, or at least without the same kind of irony. At the film's worst moments, its characters resemble those of Wes Anderson's twittering, twee nonsense films, or Whit Stillman's.At the same time, the emotional core you would hope to find at the center of things IS there, and the characters never truly cross the line into obnoxiousness. The screenplay glances wittily over several centuries' worth of amorous clichés, and in the end the film is still a fascinating experiment, even if it doesn't have the rapturous beauty of some of the director's other efforts. Recommended. It's hard to assign a numerical rating, of course, but for now let's say 7.5.

André-7 As Hartley goes through and destroys most of the cliches of traditional love stories, from Shakespeare (with the drunken KATE scene, ref. The Taming of the Shrew) to the musically challenged dance number by Donovan and two extras (a gem which turns all those Hollywood musical numbers on their head. What happens when you're in a funk about a frustrating and failing relationship and you don't feel like singing in the rain?)

adam1117 This movie is not for everyone; the illiterate and anyone who can't appreciate dialogue that sounds just as dead pan as it should aren't going to understand what's going on here at all. This movie takes a simple relationship, and, in a rather dead pan, witty manner, the characters go through the motions of a long term relationship in about a day. The dialogue is absolutely delicious, and the supporting characters are wonderful. The movie does a magnificent job of dissecting the personality of stereotypical people and relationships. Those who can appreciate the style will be rolling on the floor laughing.