Horrifying at times but a gripping story

Rating: 7/10 (3 June 2011)

It would help if from the beginning, you were aware that this movie is mostly involved with the vicious Lebanon civil war between the Moslems and the Christians. It make take a bit to become completely oriented as the movie does consist of alternating stories in different time. It also doesn't help that it is mostly in French with English subtitles. But eventually we got the hang of it and the very unusual plot which we are introduced to at the beginning as twins Jeanne and Simon are being read their mother's will and realize she has asked them to carry out her final wishes and deliver two letters on her behalf. Their task seems almost as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. If you don't mind fiction being stranger than the really terrible things that happen to people in these type of wars, the movie provides a gripping story. It is horrifying at times with what should be an unexpected ending. It provides lessons of persistence, forgiveness, motherly love and an appreciation that any one of us if we were switched at birth, could be quite the opposite of the person we turned out to be. The movie, which was co-written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, received recognition with several film festival awards and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.(2011)FilmRap.net