Mixed feelings about this

Rating: 7/10 (16 April 2006)

I sat and watched this movie a while ago with my sister and have to say we were both disappointed with it. We had read that it was going to be sweet and tender and a depiction of forbidden love. To begin with I was dazzled by the beauty of the countryside that Ang Lee had chosen to set the movie in, and Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal looked very promising in their roles. They began their relationship it seemed to me as two friends who just got on well. But before you knew what had hit you they had had their "meeting" in the tent and were thrown in to this forbidden love that just seemed uncomfortable. It did pick up however when they both went their separate ways and began to get married and have kids etc. After that it began to be a relationship and not a fling, a part of themselves that they had to hide to prevent horrific things happening to them. The acting in this movie does have to be praised as the two protagonists broke barriers even of what two men acting in a movie can do, and it was convincing enough that by the end of the movie I found myself crying when Heath Ledger found the shirt that he had lost twenty years earlier kept by Jake Gyllenhaals character. Overall this film was impressive in set and acting but the way that love was handled to begin with ruined what I felt could have been a really tender relationship build up.