David Sligar This movie seems to be filmed in real time -- 2 years! I had to look at the notes to discover its length is only 139 minutes. Very interesting that most girls under 18 gave this a "1" rating, as did I, a 63 year old man. All other ages / sexes seemed to rate this film between 5 and 10, on average. I think many adults must be bullied by the "literary" subject matter, and give the film an undeserved pass. Or are girls just more honest? I don't know about that, but Diane Kurys has inflicted this endlessly obsessive film on us as much as de Musset inflicts his repetitive cruelties on Sand. I simply got tired of watching the horrible dance and pushed the eject button well before the movie's end. In my opinion, Kurys is much better represented by Entre Nous, a quite enjoyable film with content I found coherent and meaningful.

MartinHafer While this movie wasn't exactly faithful to the lives of George Sand and Alfred de Musset, it is difficult to imagine the movie being technically better. They really got the period represented well and the cinematography is lovely. The problem, then, is I doubt if this movie should have been made in the first place. I found BOTH real-life characters to be among the most annoying and pointless characters I have ever watched. It's hard to care about people when they are like Musset--selfish, boorish and showing all the signs of a Borderline Personality Disorder. And, likewise, it's hard to care about a woman so fundamentally screwed up that she MUST have this worthless jerk in her life! Now that I think about it, it's like taking a couple who are featured on the Jerry Springer Show, giving them gobs of money and sending them back to the 1830s to live. It's just really hard to care about spoiled, rich idiots. Stop whining about your lives--you pampered fools--get real jobs and stop spending your life in search of hookers and drugs--or trying to win back this guy who seems to be trying to win the "pimp of the year" award! Frankly, after the movie was over, I just wanted them all to go to #$*@!! Next time, spend the time and effort and talent involved on doing a biography on someone who is interesting and not grating like these two knuckleheads. Their literature may be great (though after seeing this film, I'll never try reading it), but as human beings they were both sadly lacking.PS--Although in the movie Alfred de Musset and George Sand broke up when it appeared to be around 1834 and he seemed to die unknown to the French public a year or so later (or at least a short time later), he did not die until about 20 years later and had been pretty prolific with his writing after their breakup. So much for presenting the story faithfully.PPS--Don't let your kids see this boring movie, as it is very graphic. Alfred de Musset goes from brothel to brothel boinking everything that breathes. Gee, I could sure see why Sand wanted him for a lover!PPPS (wow)--Don't feel too sorry for Sand. Despite the rather monogamous image we see in the film, she had a long string of affairs with very famous men. By the time the real Musset died, she'd slept with more than her share of men (and, some say women as well--but that's open to speculation).

Zzaz82 Being French, I saw this film at its release. I had no idea about what I might find except that Juliette Binoche was in it. I went there alone. I came out in a crowd.Romanticism isn't what we think it is. This story IS romantic, not because it's a love story, but because it's a Romantics's story. George Sand and Alfred de Musset were two of our greatest writers. Their works were full of hope, of despair, of melancholy and bitterness. They were revolutionaries. This film is all about the atmosphere of that time, all about the fights and ambitions of these young writers who wanted to change the world and find an unclear future.This film is one of the few that changed my life, not because of the way it was filmed, or the performance of the actors (though they were absolutely fabulous and I'm looking forward to their next films), it changed my perception of life, made me read some Romantic works (by Sand, Musset, Hugo, Lamartine,... and that's only for the French ones) where I found a "translation" of what I feel when I look to the world in front of me.That's what this film is all about. It's not a film about a past true story, it's about all of us, everyday.

Ian Turner At the beginning of the film Alfred when commenting on a play by George observes that the lead character must die, with in a relatively short time i was having similar thoughts about Alfred. This may or may not be an historically accurate film but the story wasn't suitable for a film as despite being about the love affair between two people it managed to be remarkably lacking in passion (Remains of the Day being far more passionate despite being about two characters repressing it for the whole film). Neither character could be deemed to be sympathetic as Alfred was a selfish child and George was just annoying with her insistance on returning to the man who loved to strangle her at regular intervals.