Actually, a lot of it better not be called "love."

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2006)

I give some credit to this movie. The visual editing was creative, especially at the end. The acting my Emma Thompson was, as usual, excellent. The rest of the acting wasn't bad, either. And the movie tried hard to justify or find a rationale for an innately unconvincing argument, and goes halfway toward succeeding with me, until some of it just became so forced as to become preposterous. Thus the premise lost all credibility, and the movie became ridiculous in its shallowness and condescension.
The premise of the movie is that impulsive lust is actually love. Most people will protest that such a premise is false, and that love is something more noble and deeper than just a stirring in the loins. And I am of that mind.
But it seems to me this movie is arguing that such a stirring, based on nothing but something as superficial as laying one's eyes on a low-cut shirt, is actually "love" that one feels and therefore justifies, no, demands one to abandon one's home and family and break other societal rules or laws to satisfy that stirring. As though that stirring would last. As though that stirring were love.
But love, the real thing, that is, does not evaporate when one lays eyes on another "love" object, which in this movie could be just a cleverly designed piece of revealing clothing or a glimpse of cleavage or flesh, or some other thing equally trivial and superficial. If this were love, then it flits from one object to another. That is not love. To call that love really defiles the word.