Reviews

A desperate silence was the legitimate reaction of the audience as the ending credits roll. This is an intrinsically powerful probe of the aftermath of war, because of which men died and women were left to try to pull themselves together and move on with their lives.

There are a few very powerful scenes in the movie. Alma emotionally examining what was left by her husband in her carefully kept vault, Alma dreaming about the past when she was still wearing the ring given by her husband and routinely serving him a bowl of water with a plum every morning when he was praying, and the acute exchanges between Safija and the developer in which Safija shamed the ambitious intruders which went something like:

Developer: Can you survive in the village? What will happen when it snows? Safija: This is a concern for me and Alma. Developer: What if Alma remarries? Safija: Everything she does she will have my backing.

Overall, this is an authentic and depressing movie depicting from a feminine perspective what is left to those who have remained after a tragic war, as powerfully accomplished as in "Grbavica".

It is obvious that throughout the movie we can detect anti-Serbian sentiments. This has caused me no issues at all. Since when have we lost even the rights to love or hate for a reason?

This man's job is even more burdensome as it may appear. It extends beyond giving up a man's pride and dealing with a pool of unattractive and unconventional clientele. It takes him even more to protect his loved one, to an extent that he accepts a child not of his own, conceals his anger towards a man who sleeps with and impregnates his wife, hides his worries of losing his job and changing his "career" from his wife to protect her from aggravated depression. This is the courage and conviction of a person who sacrifices himself to protect and please his loved one. A hilarious and entertaining film which is romantic at its heart, with a bleak ending showing the harsh reality that well-meaning sacrifice is not always reciprocated and the poor often gets poorer. Although the ending shoot in the ambulance is sweet, what happens to the family afterwards is probably less so.

This is a challenging depiction of the irreversible suppression of lower classes by upper classes, and how people belonging to the former are ill-equipped to fight in a battle they can never win. The issues of corporate morality and social justice are skilfully infused in a father-son relationship, which is itself tainted by class difference and "shame" for being in the lower classes. The irreconcilable difference between classes in both a familial and corporate context is given real flesh and bones by the highly unforgettable climax built up in the scene where the son forced his father to confront him for his "shame" felt since childhood because of the father's working class status and which extended to even after the son has advanced to a higher class. A brilliant semi-documentary on corporate morality which has also successfully injected a layer of personal morality crisis.

** MAJOR SPOILERS **

......of homosexual tendency and has been in love if not a relationship with his former violin teacher. In the revealing conversation between Camille and Stephane at the cafe in the ending scene, Stephane admitted he loved "him". With hindsight, the film has dropped numerous clues on this unspoken relationship. Stephane always went to the teacher's house. The kids playing in the garden did not even react to Stephane entering the house apparently for no reason or special occasion. The teacher's maid casually asked him whether he would sleep over, implying he had done so many times before. And at the banquet at the teacher's house, the teacher said to others that Stephane was something different from all his other students. For reasons not told, quite possibly linked to this relationship, Stephane dropped out as his teacher's pupil. Not to mention the mercy killing which Stephane did. No one could have done it except someone who had been deeply in love with the person involved. One could imagine how much courage, love and grief it would take to be able to do this very act. Stephane and the teacher did not even need words to communicate. At the very same scene, Maxime was there to witness the mercy killing and finally realised the relationship between the two, and he subsequently told Camille, who realised the real reason Stephane was not attracted to her.

I am not sure if the homosexual tendency of Stephane and his anti-social behaviour are inter-related. I am not sure if he chose to live in his world so as to conceal this forbidden love for his teacher. I am also not sure if by seducing Camille, Stephane was trying to push himself to see if he could really move on and fall in love with a woman. These are all open to interpretations. But the director led us to think that Stephane was at some points genuinely interested in Camille, as opposed to what he claimed to be a sheer prank in order to to get at his boss. From this we know that his homosexual tendency is not the only factor which would explain his somewhat awkward anti-social behaviour, and that he was indeed a person living in his own winter, a utterly private man who is devoid of and perhaps disdainful of showing emotions.

** END OF SPOILERS **

This is a fascinating character study which is profound, intriguing and moving, and to myself is a uniquely personal movie. Daniel Auteuil is the best man to be cast as Stephane, for his unique charm, charisma and subtle seductiveness. With the make-up and costumes, he appeared beautifully masculine and exactly as what a person with those kinds of emotions and qualities would be. Excellent job done.

There is nothing much to this film. Towards the ending scene where the couple were cuddling in bed I came to feel that the display of human flesh and private parts in this film had gone on the excessive side of things (not that they were not aesthetically appealing or attractive, but you know......). Looks more like a mild porno film to me, with conspicuous efforts to flash out human genitals (Think we saw those of about 10 people throughout the 1.5 hour?). Telling the story in a complacent effort of a reversed chronology does not help at all. Instead, this has led to one very major anti-climax in movie history and as the story unfolded itself to tell what happened before and before, I got more and more bored and less and less eager to know, thanks to the prior confession of it all right in the beginning and the middle of the movie that has sucked up pretty much all the mystery and hype.

This is a clever story about relationships and a display of three main categories of players in the game of relationships: playboys (Max), manipulative women (Alice) and the fools who may be indeed in love (Lisa, Muriel and Lucien).

Max and Alice are very unlikeable and perhaps despicable characters but who are always in control in the game leaving their partners around in the dark. But as the profusely discussed ending tells us, as veteran players as Max and Alice were, they would be happy to part ways anytime they see fit as if the game was just announced to be over and each one of them could not care less to get on with his or her own life and play another game with some other anonymous people when another opportunity presented itself. Lisa, Muriel and Lucien might be the ones who felt like investing something real in a relationship, only not being able to realise that they were the baits in the game and the ultimate losers (as far as what we were shown is concerned....who knows if they are also advance players of some sort in their worlds not shown to us on screen).

This is a very fast-paced, delicately crafted and seductively witty story with an enticing execution by the cast. It also deserves some deeper thinking: how much is real in a game of relationship?

Okay...this is certainly not bad, at least as far asthe acting goes. But this is definitely not excellent, or anywhere close to a true 7.9 rating.

The plot is not very interesting, certainly not creative nor well developed. At times it feels like the product of a desperate and artificial quest for sub-plots like the one about the paedophile and his mum in order just to fill out the 2-hour package. Character development is a bit shallow as we do not really know what constituted to and started the unhappy and dysfunctional marriages the lead characters were enduring. The part in which Patrick Wilson passionately invited Kate Winslet to run with him is just so......unconvincing that I could not help laughing out. The way the whole movie was structured and layered and the narratives which are highly reminiscent in content and style of a particular popular American TV series makes me think whether I was really watching an extended episode of Desperate Housewives! Okay...enough from me.

I try to make a bold guess that most of the votes which have contributed to the strong rating of this movie largely came from an American audience. Sorry to say this but the truth is there are so many more higher quality movies better than this elsewhere than within the four corners of America, which indeed truly deserve this rating. Look further!

I must confess I have become a huge fan of both Techine and Daniel Auteuil after watching "My Favourite Season". Simply love it love it love it! Techine is the master in movie character developments and excellent at developing and embodies personal tensions and interactions between characters. In "Wild Reeds", it was among 4 teenagers and in "My Favourite Season", it's among family members and it was done superbly and extremely convincingly.

The human emotions, conscience and tensions between siblings, between parents and children (both Berthe's and Emilie's children), between spouses, between a son-in-law and mother-in-law, between an uncle and his nieces were written and acted out extremely authentically and unpretentiously. It hits right at you and set you thinking about your own relatives and the corresponding tensions and relationships in your own life. This is so crude yet so real and audience are left to be awed at how genuine and honest this is especially for those who can feel connected to one of some of the characters.

A few scenes were utterly moving and sweet to me. Antoine and Emilie singing in the car with Berthe listening and could not helping smiling from her heart in the backseat. The scene where Antoine rushed back to his flat to check on his ill and depressed sister fearing that she would plunge off the balcony. The scene where Antoine deliberately "fell" from the balcony just to attract attention from her angry sister. Not to mention the extremely beautiful and touching discussions about favourite seasons at the end which built up to an incredible climax at the end, so typically spectacularly done by Techine.

I admire Daniel Auteuil who portrays Antonie very fittingly. Confidently, self-righteous yet passionate successful surgeon, Daniel was very convincing and makes Antonie a highly likable and romantic character throughout.

Personally, I would rate "My Favourite Season" higher than "Wild Reeds", even though both are absolutely amazing and beautiful character studies. I wish this is not yet the best of Techine as I expect more of this good stuff from this truly wonderful and unique director. This is among my all time favourites, closely followed by "Wild Reeds" and "You can count on me" in this similar genre.

A flamboyant and immensely colourful story of the lives of a group of socially marginalised women and women-wanna-be and how these women feel bonded to one another and support one another in each of their extraordinary and difficult lives. Very comical and lyrical, and above all, an utmost aesthetic and very visual treat to the eye and sensualities.

Throughout the movie, so many shots were done to their respective cinematic and photographic perfection to an extent I for a few occasions could not stop freezing the shots in order just to watch the still pictures for a few more seconds in detail. The excellent use of lightings and colours laid a flamboyantly vivid and energetic and almost surreal backdrop for the director's story-telling. The shots with Manuela holding a colourful umbrella in the rain watching his son run down by a car, Rosa going into the "not very furbished" yet dream-like flat she recently rented, and Agrado's flat seemingly with Gaudi's architecture in every inch of it……truly a master of colours You don't have to feel connected to the women and and women-wanna-be in order to enjoy this film. The mere process of watching the colours unfolding, assimilating and crystallising on the screen is already a massive visual treat.

This is a fascinatingly "real" movie.

The slowness and the still shots created an incredibly genuine atmosphere which smoothly leads you through the ordeal the leading character went through side by side. This is a scornful satire and outcry against how the corrupt communist regime and the masculine Romanian society oppressed and bullied women who were placed in helplessly vulnerable situations in relation to developing their potentials and maintaining their sexual integrity and autonomy.

I particularly appreciate the couple of occasions in which the director created an utmost sense of emergency which, quite surprisingly, turned out to be false alarms. The fumbling into the dark to look for a place to scrap the foetus, the belated return to the hotel room, the ambulance outside the hotel room, etc…..the ultimate prevention of the tentalisingly real tragedies from happening on the contrary left enormous rooms for the audience to imagine how bad things could have gone and how dangerous it could have been to the women involved. Not letting the audience see those eventualities on screen was surprisingly and extremely spine-chilling and disturbing. A great movie with a hidden sense of feminist irony and frustration.

This movie is about the director's scepticism about monogamy, fidelity and last but not least, marriage.

I believe the message Ozon is trying to get across through this movie is right in the conversation about relationships among the 2 pair of couples in the 2nd scene, and I think his belief was projected in what was said by the young boyfriend of the gay brother of Gilles, which in essence is that for some people, to settle for one person for his/her entire life is against human nature and disaster will be doomed to ensue.

In my view, Gilles should not have got married at all and should probably remain single for his life. And Marion was obviously too untamed and not ready for marriage let alone raising a kid. A nice movie which features a few very beautiful scenes, the sharp contrast between the romantic dance of Marion's parents and Marion's immediate unfaithful adultery, the complicated emotions of a recently divorced couple trying to have sex which turned somewhat into a horrific "rape" which was somewhat "consented" by the woman's apparently reluctant submission, the dance between Marion, Gilles's brother and his boyfriend while Gilles was left alone in the sofa watching them. The music was first-rate and made the movie a soothing experience.

This is a heart-wrenching movie that puts human conscience to the test. At some points of the movie, I thought of stopping it being unable to take it anymore. It makes me think how evil human behaviour can get and sets me thinking whether the events in the movie do happen in real life.

What else can be more evil than a mother who does nothing to stop his son from being brutally abused pretending nothing has happened just to maintain her stupid marriage? What else can be more evil than the people who are supposed to be the most respected in society and occupy the moral high ground but indeed sanction the worst form of human abuse and torture pretending that they have seen nothing? I think it is a multi-dimensional movie, about human hypocrisy and parenting, with deeper messages beneath. After watching the movie, I am definitely convinced that the mother is the most evil of all the demons in this film who makes me puke. I am afraid the corollary of growing up in this kind of evil environment is the naturalisation of an innocent soul into yet another human evil, and that in real life there are not many people as firm and steadfast as Erik Ponti.