Just perfect...

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

A piece of art, no doubt about it. The cruel world of a twisted relationship, Love in its best form, delight, ecstatic, psychotic, and death. A final round of abundance, gone beyond belief. Superb performances by Jeremy Irons as usual and Julia Binouch. See it, fee it, recognize it. It's in us all...xx

..have watched this film couple-three times through the years.. and really do very much like all the actors involved.. but it's a clear and simple case of an over exaggerated script and similar direction.. in real life, unless you're mentally incapacitated, you know there are actual consequences to your actions, yet here you have two seemingly highly intelligent individuals blowing up their entire lives, and those of loved ones around them, all for a totally unworkable relationship.. and then one of the final scenes ices it.. the two of them flailing around in bed like no other on-screen couple you've seen before or since.. really, had they just toned it down a notch or two overall.. it would have come off sooo much better..

I watched this movie several times and gradually developing obsession on its own. It probably sounded more terrified than it should. However, I would say I was obsessive to figure out how the obsession started.There are carnal desires embedded in our instincts which somehow hard to detect not even be recognized with. How we are drawn into someone without even knowing the person it's beyond our comprehension. This movie is a good presentation for that. Obsession cannot be categorized as love. Love is reciprocal. Obsession is forceful without mutual interaction which may cause harms even cost the ultimate price. I think the origin of obsession might come from past traumatic experiences which is so well explained in the movie. There are several movies well laying out the obsession but not the reasons. This one is different. It showed how it started and developed which I was not aware in the beginning until later. I am not a big fan of dark subjects. This one has more substances than others.There is only one thing I felt short of is it did not explain Stephen's process of desiring an affair. As a prominent figure, his struggles seemed not well explained beyond he just ditching out here and there. I felt it should be more than that. It's a good movie just not everybody's cup of tea.

Take overwrought Oedipal stuff about a British minister sleeping with his son's fiancé, and subdue to a cold eroticism that holds no satisfaction in the sweat-soaked bedspreads. Break this up in so many anxieties for each character, past and present, and center around a quest for images that were dear but never quite mourned. The son wishing his disaffected father was passionate, but which we know he is exactly where he shouldn't be; her in turn, accepting to expiate the image that wracked her life with guilt by marrying it. His wife, doubly aghast, who has to mourn about the wrong loved one. So it makes some sense that Louis Malle was drawn to this project. The subtle portraits mirrored against each other in a way that they reveal a larger broken humanity, like in Atlantic City so long ago.But it does remain a film that rests with these images we are seeing, polished again to a certain cold beauty but without a certain nuance to entertain. We are meant to be heavily involved on an emotional basis for this to work, and though decent, haven't we got so many films like this?