Just what I expected

Fantastic!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I loved this movie, too - though I understand most of what those, who criticized it, said. But what the heck: when I found it in our local video store, a safe 10 years after its first release, I felt lonely, morose and sorry for myself. After the movie, I longed to travel to Paris again, and to the Big Apple, to meet people, cry and shout and make love. Worked for me! Love this movie to bits! I am going to see it again and again - much like "Groundhog Day", also not the most glamorous or most refined of movies, but a feast for the heart of the lonely hunter. Go and treat yourself to some French Fries. Freedom Fries? Not in this movie: it's a result of bilateral, transatlantic love. Actually, just love is enough.

For the most part, I liked this movie.I liked that french was spoken in France. (So many American movies have the characters, in places other than the United States, speak only english, even when the character is a native of that "foreign" country. See the movie "Chocolate". This movie starred Juliet Binoche, living in France, yet, she speaks english.)But, at the final quarter the movie lost me. . .A SPOILER IS APPROACHING. ..when, upon her leaving NYC to return to Paris, the dog--who loves her, and whom she loves--tries to meet up with her at the taxi cab. For whatever reason, she says to her friend, who is in the taxi with her, that she has had enough of the dog, and, then she tells the driver to get going. The dog then proceeds to follow her, by running, in NYC traffic, after the taxi. I just thought that was an incredibly uncaring scene: the dog would most definitely be hit by a car. But, voila!, miraculously, the dog meets up with her at the airport (If you don't live in NYC, you should know that the airport, any of the three airports, is miles and miles and miles away from Manhattan!), and he is unharmed.I can suspend disbelief when viewing a movie, but this was definitely too much for me. For her character to have jeopardized the safety of the dog, by so carelessly allowing him to follow her taxi in heavy NYC traffic, is absolutely cruel and ridiculous, and out of character for her: She went to great lengths to get the dog back from the woman who removed him from the apartment. . .another scene,by the way, which made absolutely no sense!. ..by swimming in the filthy water of the pond in Central Park.

"Juliette Binoche cannot act", according to 'anonnymous' below. That isa ridiculous assertion. As is to link this film with Kieslowski's'Blue'. The problem with this movie is that neither Binoche nor Hurt aregiven the material in the form of a good screenplay nor the direction tomake the film work. It seems to me that Akerman, who is an excellentdirector, see La Captive, does not have a good enough command of Englishto write a screenplay in the language.The film, which starts out nicely quickly gets bogged down in thepsychoanalyitical. Endless "yes" and "mmmmm"s loose their amusementvalue quickly. The romance angle is badly developed, just why hasBeatrice fallen for John Wire aka Henry? It doesnt work.But Juliette Binoche can act. In fact in Europe she is regarded withIsabelle Huppert to be the finest actress working today. But she canonly produce the goods when she is given the material and the carefuldirection necessary. Go rent "Rendez-Vous", "The Unbearable Lightness ofBeing", "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf", "Three Colours Blue", "Alice &Martin", "The Widow of Saint-Pierre" and especially "Code Innconnu" andtry arguing otherwise.

I think the first minutes and the end are great moments of comedy. Nevertheless if I were the director I would have explored more the situation of the characters, he in Paris, she in New York, with a lot of gags, to put them together only in the end. His sudden return to New York slows the funny rythm of the beginning in my opinion and puts us into a series of pseudo romantic very weak scenes like those sessions with Hurt on the couch and Binoche uttering monosyllabes all the time. And one "intelligent" question: how could she got the dog into the plane right in the hour in spite of all those very strict rules about animals travelling abroad?