Load of rubbish!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This movie is lushly filmed with a typically gorgeous Paris backdrop, interesting and beautiful camera work and an excellent cast. The somber beginning, as we start to get to know the central character, an elderly man with little to live for after the death of his adored wife, gives way to hope when he meets a young, vivacious Parisian and seems to kindle the desire to continue on. Is it love? No ..., not that kind of love, though there will be those who want something to spark between them. Instead we see two essentially lonely people finding someone else who can provide simple human companionship. The man's flaws begin to be explored with the arrival of his son and daughter after a failed suicide. The purpose of the daughter is beyond me as she barrels in, tries to take over the father's life, chain smokes cigarettes and bounds out just as quickly. We learn nothing from her character. The last third of the picture will drag completely as we continue to look in vain for some explanation for the characters actions. Though the banter between father and son seems on the way to enlightening us as to why they disdain each other so much, there really isn't enough here figure out how they, or we, are ever going to understand how they got to where they are. Mostly both characters engage in tedious whining about who owes who what for past insults. The real kicker is when the girl abruptly falls into the arms of the son when there has been absolutely no indication of any real attraction. The whole thing renders the ending utterly unbelievable and devoid of any real meaning. Story endings are difficult and whoever wrote this one failed miserably.

Sandra Nettelbeck's zombified film, based upon the French novel La Douceur Assassine, ostensibly opens where Michael Haneke's Amour ended. But while Haneke's film sought to challenge our principles and provoke topical debate, Nettelbeck's is more likely to challenge the patience and provoke irritation in all but the most undemanding. The dialogue is trite, the relational dynamics are soapy, and the tone is sentimental.Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) has just put his wife (Jane Alexander) to eternal sleep. He's condemned to shuffling around his plush Parisian apartment, now an echoing mausoleum, until such a time that he plucks up the courage to meet his wife in the thereafter. But his dwindling existence is suddenly electrified when he's hit upon (or, contrives to be hit upon) by a young dance instructor named Pauline (Clémence Poésy). Her father is dead. "You remind me of my father," she tells Matthew. This gives you an idea of the sort of script we're dealing with.The essential premise, which wavers between faintly creepy and screw-faced baffling, wouldn't be such a problem if there were deeper layers of drama underneath. But it's all surface. Potentially difficult issues – e.g. assisted suicide – are brushed against gently, while others are glossed over entirely – e.g. the dubious sexual energy between lonely old Matthew and daddy's little princess Pauline. And this is before Matthew's vile children (Justin Kirk and Gillian Anderson) turn up to do some shopping and tell their dad he's selfish. It's a film world where characters are seemingly more interested in soap operatics than behaving like recognisable human beings; and where men and women relate like alien species.Michael Caine is suitably bumbling and shell-shocked in the title role, even though, playing an American, he adopts a bizarre accent that prances across most of the Western hemisphere, often in the course of a single line. Poésy is adorable; except, beyond the basic knowledge of her own bereavement, we never truly understand what draws her so powerfully to Matthew, let alone why she sidles up to his hospital bed in a see-through top. Anderson provides a brief burst of energy, but it's a cameo really. The heavy lifting is left to Kirk, and it's a charmless delivery of a charmless character."It wasn't supposed to be like this!" cries Matthew. Another clunker of a line from a screenplay blandified to oblivion. No alarms and no surprises; the surreal, vanishing point horror that is spousal grief is rendered as hazy anaesthesia, where the senses are dulled until some younger model comes along to reawaken them. The sequences where Matthew relives conversations with his wife are presumably meant to represent reflective recollection, but I couldn't help wondering if they might be born of guilt for burying his face in Pauline's boobs while he wept for his loss.The cinematography is a watercolour array of picture postcards depicting landmark Paris and quaint surrounding countryside, scored to trickling piano texture that doesn't so much complement the drama as provide a marshmallow mattress topper.A film with a geriatric theme needn't be geriatric in pace and tone. It patronises the very people whose plight it seeks to illuminate. How about some psychological insight? Some effort to chart this melancholy territory? Okay, we see Matthew's desire to emerge from his malaise. But what does that malaise really look like? Feel like? By the end we're none the wiser, and one is left concluding that the film simply isn't trying hard enough on any level.

Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) is a retired Princeton professor of philosophy who lives in Paris and speaks no French. His wife (Jane Alexander) is the one who speaks french and then she dies. His life for three years have been one of passing the time. He meets Pauline Laubie (Clémence Poésy) on the bus. She is an extremely helpful dance instructor. They become best friends. He is hospitalized after taking too many sleeping pills or too little depending on the view point. His two kids Miles Morgan (Justin Kirk) and Karen Morgan (Gillian Anderson) visit. They are certain that Pauline is a gold digger.There is a nice easy manner about Clémence Poésy. She keeps this movie slightly interesting despite it being such a slow crawl. The relationship between Michael Caine and her is somewhat interesting. It seems the movie needed to stay with them. For about an hour and a half, the movie works reasonably well. Then the ending goes down the wrong path. It tries to be a movie about a father and son which it doesn't really introduce until the second half of the movie. It would be so much better to have the movie stay solely with Caine and Poésy.

With odd characters! At two hours long this story becomes a real challenge to keep the viewers attention and not to get a tired butt.The emotional 'distresses' the three lead characters are burdened with are not explained in depth enough -- at least not for me. The story is a bit shallow for the state of mind we find in each character and the daughter being the most interesting is written out of the plot way too quickly. And the Pauline character is just not believable to the point of her involvement with father and son.I found the story choppy and Michael Caine seemed a bit labored in creating the suicidal and lonely Matthew.