The film is in no rush to get to where the IMDb synopsis says it's meant to go. It doesn't only focus on its titular character's "descend into madness", in lack of a less callous term. Instead, it follows the protagonists on their journey in 3 different parts of France, presenting vignettes from their everyday lives. Some of those were more connected to the spine of the story than others, but they were all equally exquisitely shot and acted. Few of them were, however, interesting enough to keep me invested for the 185-minute long runtime of the director's cut (the only version I could find)
I loved the first 40 minutes of the film. They were tight. Every scene was compelling and entertaining. The film started gradually losing me when the couple re-located for the first time. Throughout that second part of the movie, very few things happened to drive the plot. It was mostly detours and anecdotes, mainly ones intended to be funny. Nearly an hour worth of those. On the one hand, those made the movie more natural and prevented it from being a monotone melodrama. On the other hand, they completely deprived it of tension. The tone vacillated from serious to humorous way too often, at the expense of both the dramatic and the comedic scenes.
By the time the movie was (finally) ready to reach its dramatic conclusion, not only had I lost interest, but it also, somehow, managed to seem abrupt even though the film had 150+ minutes to set it up. The fact that I found the ending to be awful and unjustified made matters worse. In hindsight, I should have at least looked harder for the theatrical version
I loved the first 40 minutes of the film. They were tight. Every scene was compelling and entertaining. The film started gradually losing me when the couple re-located for the first time. Throughout that second part of the movie, very few things happened to drive the plot. It was mostly detours and anecdotes, mainly ones intended to be funny. Nearly an hour worth of those. On the one hand, those made the movie more natural and prevented it from being a monotone melodrama. On the other hand, they completely deprived it of tension. The tone vacillated from serious to humorous way too often, at the expense of both the dramatic and the comedic scenes.
By the time the movie was (finally) ready to reach its dramatic conclusion, not only had I lost interest, but it also, somehow, managed to seem abrupt even though the film had 150+ minutes to set it up. The fact that I found the ending to be awful and unjustified made matters worse. In hindsight, I should have at least looked harder for the theatrical version