Belle du Seigneur
English-language adaptation of Albert Cohen's epic Swiss tale of a tortured love affair between a high-ranking Jewish official and the Protestant wife of one of his employees.
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- Cast:
- Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Natalia Vodianova , Ed Stoppard , Marianne Faithfull , Maria Bonnevie , Janine Horsburgh , Stefan Weinert
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Reviews
Absolutely Fantastic
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
There's no point to this movie.Terribly thin plot, with barely anything remembering. I don't want to spoil anything, but what is there to spoil? Watch the trailer. That's the film.The characters have something closer to a backstory than a story arc. The events are closer to anecdotes than plot points.Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays another version of Henry Tudor. Vodianova plays a pretty girl. They have an affair. That's the film right there.Not a spoiler: either the affair ends or the film ends before it does. There's only two possible outcomes. One of these two is the ending. Probably.There you go. That's about it.
An arrogant, overly dramatic young man who we are perhaps supposed to admire because he reacts to moral outrages in a way that would be expected of the morally honourable, forms a sexual relationship with the exceedingly beautiful wife of an underling in the same organisation. She, for reasons that are never clear, but may be attributed to the fact she looks about 18, instantly falls for this unknown man who makes it clear he (1)is supposedly madly in love with a person he has never actually spoken to and (2) intends to have sex with her in spite of the fact she is married. Her idiot of a husband disappears early on in the story, and they have a up and down relationship in which our hero repeatedly expresses his insecurity about our heroine's love for him by suggesting she would not love him if he wasn't a handsome young man. He has sex with another woman, but that us fine because it doesn't mean anything. She lies about having sex with another man and our hero acts like a jealous, abusive idiot. Stopped watching at about this point, two-thirds of the way through. All in all a daft story about a silly young woman and an obsessive idiot.
One of the best movies made,but it's not for everyone, it has betrayal, delusional ideals and anything a good drama should have. Jonathan's best movie apart from The Tudors, and match point. The movie contains scenes where it's hard to follow and that becomes intriguing you wanna know more. By all means the book was excellent but it's nice to see a movie version which usually never does justice to the paper format. The supporting actress didn't have many lines and wasn't your conventional housewife but her beauty and charm captured him, somehow. If you have time and are confused watch this movie it will keep you busy and interested particularly if you had a fight with your lover it will entertain you.
Outstanding scenery in Italy and Switzerland, international struggle during WWII, human fragility, human struggle, conflict on issues and the directives from the League of Nations from a Jewish point of view. This is also the first time Natalia Vodianova has combined her modeling career with acting, which is promising. I particularly enjoyed seeing European hotels and houses and the architecture of the settings. Solal portrays a troubled individual who appears to be looking for a way out, believing in his position he cannot change the rigidity of the LON. There is also the issue of the role of women during that time-frame and some of Ariana's struggles. Adapted from a book of the same name from a respected French novelist. I would certainly watch this again, you get the feeling there's pieces of the story that you're missing the first time watching