... to the bottom of the French drama movies (dvd)

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 2011)

Maybe I got a spider-sense, but as soon as I saw the boring opening credits with that dull song, I awaited a stinker and I wasn't proved wrong.
This four stars big Hollywood production is worthy of our best French specialty, the "art house cinema": the recipe goes like this: shoot the cast talking, babbling endlessly, putting the audience to sleep with silly, hollow lines, with no visual directing, just a close-up of them sitting in a spare room. That's the thing here: multiply this by 10 (the number of sequences here because they are quite long during about 9 minutes each) and you got the full story. I hoped to take a tour in London but with this movie, you stay indoor.
Beyond this poor visual, the substance is painfully lacking: it's A who is in love with B but who prefers finally C that likes D. For sure, B and D meet "by accident" (no kidding, in a city big as London) while A and C cheats together. Then, all of them split to rejoice as if nothing ever happened! Wow: that's interesting: for the amateur, you have the usual "I love you", "It will be hard but I love her", "Was it better", "I really love you" (after the come-back), bla-bla and bla-bla... If you like that, fine for you but it's not my case. As it's a play, maybe some will find the lines and the psychological studies of characters interesting, but in my opinion, if you catch your partner cheating, it's broken and it's time to leave: in other words, there's nothing to say about it.
The only good thing here is Natalie (as always) who tries to be more assertive with her intimate life with her character that seems to be Mathilda (from "Léon") a few later.
In conclusion, how can it be that the sex stories of swingers and cheaters make always disastrous movies whereas romantic, pure, sincere love stories make classics?