twa colours boring

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2005)

I haven't seen the other films in this famous trilogy, but had been led to believe that they were exceptional pieces of film-making. This first instalment didn't fill me with anticipation for the other two. There just isn't much going on really. Juliette Binoche is a very attractive lady in that gamine way so beloved of the French, and there is no shortage of languid close-ups. The director is so obviously enamoured of his lead that one wonders about the scene behind the scenes. The direction is artfully tricky and contemplative but the story, as such, is so trite as to be soap-worthy. The preponderance of blue filter was also overdone: to my untrained eye; it seemed that a better director might have used location/lighting to create the effect more often than he did, (the pool), rather than relying on such a tired device. The relationship with the other composer is standard Mills&Boon, and the plot of the damaged sensitive heroine being brought out of the self-imposed shell of grief is similarly tired. The discovery of the mistress with child, and the rapprochement therewith, may seem to Anglo-Saxon eyes to be a revelatory dramatic device to illustrate the depth of her love for the dead husband and his son-to-be, and a self-discovery through forgiveness, but I didn't see it that way. I spent some time in France as a teenager, and cheerfully experienced at first hand the rather cavalier attitude of the locals to marital arrangements. It is considered quite acceptable, if not normal, to have a lover/mistress outside the marriage, and this has a social cachet, especially amongst the bourgeoisie. Therefore, to my, and I would assume a European eye, this climax (no pun) to the drama seemed a rather flat conclusion to a story that never really got out of the blocks to take us anywhere. Nice to look at but nothing to chew on: a confection.