Verhängnis

There's a fine line between passion and pain, and no one does either of them better than Jeremy Irons. Obsession is the bottom line here, and anyone who's been there can relate. Nothing else matters, and in this movie, Irons crosses all the lines. His first introduction to Binoche...their first rendezvous...their last ...these are engraved in my memory. Sure rich and beautiful people populate this movie, but the emotional punch it packs is one hundred percent REAL. Miranda Richardson, as the grieving mother, couldn't be better. The haunting photographic image near the end of the movie hit me very hard. A deserted island? And only one movie? Damage. Damage. Damage.

I don't know. I have read some of the reviews here and some literate folk seem to me to want to wax lyrical about vapor. Meaning, sometimes people get a kick out of writing silly things.

If this is the worse movie anyone has seen, then they've not seen many movies. I'm not saying it is for everyone, it's a long key affair, where everything is below the surface (which is actually referenced in the film over a dinner table scene) until finally it breaks free with horrendous results.

Four great performances, Irons is brilliant as a man with great self-control who finds himself for the first time ever, obsessed. Richardson who nearly steals the entire film with a single scene near the end - writing years of personal grief across her face in bruises. Binoche who knows where safe harbor lies (with Peter) who cannot avoid destroying peoples lives. Graves as the ineffectual son, who knows he's in love with a woman in pain, but does not yet know how it will manifest itself.

It's a good film. Beware of anyone who goes to extremes to say otherwise. It's not an easy film to ridicule. (ps. I watched the R2 DVD, it's an awful presentation - AVOID).

I'm mainly posting this because I've been reading the other comments here, and I just had to respond. While a movie's quality is (for the most part) subjective and everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, I must say that those who thoroughly panned this movie have really demonstrated how little imagination most people have, and their lack of appreciation for subtlety in film or any other artistic medium is readily apparent.

For all the talk about the sex scenes in this movie and how they're laughable, or not erotic or whatever, no one is getting the point: the sex between Irons and Binoche is not there just to get the audience all hot and bothered. You have to look at it within the context of the story: these two people are not just out to get laid, to satisfy some momentary sexual whim. They didn't say, Oh, hey, you look hot, I'd sure like to bang you. From the moment they meet they are both captive to an overwhelming, inexplicable passion, due to deep-seated, subconscious motivations stemming from each person's individual history and emotional nature. It's fairly clear from the mostly silent, often awkward, and sometimes almost painful-looking sex that they are not in it for the sheer physical sensation, or even to show affection/love for each other. They simply can't help themselves. Through sex with each other they appear to be working out their own individual pain, a sense of loss or longing for something they are unable to express any other way, and the physical act is almost incidental. Whether they betray or hurt anyone else is beside the point. Each is damaged, and this is how they attempt to repair that damage, but it's a hopeless cause. This is why the sex comes off for the most part as passionless, futile, and far from pleasurable. These are not happy, normal people--they cannot experience much real pleasure the way the average person does. The sex, in service to the story and the characters, is portrayed just as it should be.

'Damage' a terrible film with bad acting? Nonsense. Even if you don't like it, i.e., it's just not to your taste, it's really impossible to deny that this movie is well done in every respect, and when it comes down to it, that is the only real criterion for judging the merit of any work of art. Did all the elements of the movie work to get across what the filmmaker was trying to do? Absolutely. Most people seem to be judging this movie based on their own petty, immature biases developed over years of watching empty, brainless, formula movies: do I like this actor's voice or looks; am I turned on by this actress's body; are these people and the things they do and say close enough to my own ideas about what people are like and how they should behave; does this movie let me remain in my safe, shallow, ignorant bubble of conformity and enjoy my microwave popcorn on the couch? I'm also amazed when people talk about how there are no characters to 'like' in a movie. Who cares? This should not be the point of any work of art. Life does not always present us with likable people, and neither does art. Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche and Miranda Richardson are all superb. Richardson's intensity is mesmerizing, and Irons and Binoche communicate incredible depths to each other and the audience with the smallest gesture or a seemingly pedestrian line, proving that less is almost always more. Watch Irons early on as he portrays his character's quiet sense of desperation and yearning to break out of his comfortable but dead existence, as though all his life he's been out of place, wondering how he got there but unable to articulate it. Binoche has few lines most of the time but doesn't need them: she shows convincingly with her face and movements an entire world of desolation and pain in Anna, along with the fierce drive she carries to maintain some semblance of hope in her life. This is all also due of course to the script and the direction. Besides all this it's also an incredibly stylish and gorgeous movie to look at. I don't know how anyone with any imagination or perceptiveness could find this movie boring or badly done. All in all, I highly recommend this film for a mature, sensitive, and powerful look at human relations and behavior. It's almost mythic in its ability to convey a sense of inevitability and emotional devastation. Brilliant, and hard to forget.

My main reason for seeing 'Damage' was for the cast. Especially love Jeremy Irons, who very seldom has done wrong (in terms of performances that is, he has been in his fair share of misfires but is a bright spot in most of them). But also love a lot of Juliette Binoche's performances ('Three Colours: Blue' being particularly notable, she is astonishing in that) and the same goes for Miranda Richardson in much of her work.

That the director was Louis Malle ('Au Revoir Les Enfants') in his penultimate film, and the composer was Krzysztof Kieslowski regular Zbigniew Preisner were further attractions. The themes of lust, passion, betrayal and the consequences of damage are not unfamiliar ones in film/tevision before 'Damage' or since it, but there is nothing wrong with that and when explored well in film/television they do leave a very powerful impact. Familiarity is not a bad thing, it's over-familiarity on top of not being interesting or unintentionally funny (or all of those) when it is a problem.

'Damage' is, has been and is going to be, a beautiful and interesting film to some. To others, it is, has been and is going to be cold and dull. Count me in as somebody in the former camp, while totally seeing why it won't connect, and hasn't connected, for others and am not in any way going to hold that against them. It is not one of Malle's best films, nowhere near, and most of the actors have done better work before and since. Irons with 'Dead Ringers', sorry about going on a lot about this particular film but just love that film and his performance in it, and Binoche with 'Three Colours: Blue'. It is some of Richardson's best work though. With it not being a good or particularly fair representation of Rupert Graves in my mind.

Found Graves to be wasted in an underwritten clueless dullard sort of role with nowhere near as much screen time as he should have done, his biggest scene/moment being one of the film's most memorable near the end. A shame because he has given numerous good to great performances, unforgettable for example in 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'.

Some of the editing in the early parts of the film is on the rushed side, likewise with how the central relationship begins and unfolds so easily and quickly. Stephen's motivations could have gone into depth more.

However, 'Damage' is beautifully and stylishly filmed and most of the editing is fine. The closing shot is very hard to forget. Preisner's score is hauntingly intimate, sometimes hypnotic and at other times ominous, which fits the tone more than ideally. Not some of his very best work, but Preisner even not at his very best still delivered. Malle shows no signs of fatigue in his directing despite it being his penultimate film, do prefer it when there is more of a personal touch to his direction seen in especially 'Au Revoir Les Enfants' (that film though is very personal, auto-biographical actually) but he is hardly out of his depth. Props to him to even attempt exploring a very interesting but difficult subject and do so as compellingly and bravely as he does.

Morever, 'Damage' is thoughtfully and leanly scripted. The clear highlight in this regard being Richardson's big scene at the end (the one that garnered her the acclaim she got for her performance), will try not to spoil it too much but it sure does pack an emotional punch. Another highlight too, and the line to sum up the entire film, is the line from Binoche regarding the impact of damage. The story thematically is nothing new and from reading any basic plot summary sounds like familiar territory and very thin. It's the way the themes are explored that is unconventional and surprisingly insightful, lust and betrayal has seldom been portrayed in such a dark, intense and devastating way even when the film is deliberately paced. The tension does simmer and often when not a word is being said and when expressions are so subtle. Ingrid's big scene at the end is the dramatic highlight, searing in intimacy and devastating in emotional impact when seeing how much damage has been caused, got the sense that even Irons was trying to hold back emotion filming the scene.

It does have to be said that 'Damage' has some of the most interesting love scenes of any film (easily), know very few films to have love scenes these gymnast-athletic and searingly intense while also being passionate and erotic enough, most of the passion coming from Irons though. Binoche apparently disliked working with Irons when his approach to the love scenes became too physical (there is that sense in the first one), but that dislike to me didn't come out on screen and liked that their chemistry wasn't overwrought. What is also interesting about 'Damage' is how it portrays the characters, particularly in Stephen and Anna being such polar opposites in type and their attitude to relationships

Of the three leads, despite having the least to do Richardson is particularly great and is a fierce powerhouse at the end. That is obvious in terms of awards attention too, her performance was the most acclaimed of the three. When it comes to tortured characters, upper-class gentlemen with moral issues and understated intensity, Irons was one of the best, and he shows that here. Should be is, but he's had material well beneath him for a while now with some exceptions here and there that doesn't show those qualities anywhere near enough. Binoche is exotic and suitably despairing in one of her "sorrowful sisters" roles that she always played superbly and never in an over the top way, subtly expressive actually. Just to say that that phrase is her words and way of coining some of her roles, not mine. Leslie Caron is memorable in her small role.

Altogether, not for all but to me it was very good with a few reservations. 8/10

This movie is really much less shallow than many people criticizing it would think. Actually, I was captivated by it from start to finish. It is understandable that one would question the likeliness of all these events happening, and in that respect the characters might be a bit unreal. But I don't think the movie should be watched that way. The sheer unreasonable passion between Anna and Stephen should be felt, not analyzed. I think that a lot of people wished that they would or could feel something like this for another in today's harsh, business-like world. It is always an easy way out to be cynical about it. Although the characters and their relationships are not very "deep", I found everything entirely believable, and that is the only thing that counts.

I did not really ever see an entire movie with Binoche or Irons, and I wonder how they managed to slip through for so long, because I loved them both. Funny how one commentator remarked that the Anna character should have been sleazier for credibility. Don't you see that this all about self-destruction? The tiny, innocuous-looking Anna that Binoche portrays, a girl that most people wouldn't give a second look, a girl that might seem cold at first sight, is just what attracts Stephen, because they both find in each other what they have never found in anyone else. Both characters are on a mission to make their lives more miserable, because that it what defines them. This certainly goes for Anna, but Stephen is even more interesting because his life is so well organized. Anna is just a catalyst for everything he probably wanted to happen one way or another, and that is why he will not stop their "collision course" when he still can. The inevitability of it all shows best at the end: he shows no remorse, or any other emotion, just acceptation. He was subconsciously wanting to put and end to the life he had been living so far. This is also a feeling that many people can relate to, I think. Yes, the end is a bit theatrical maybe, but it didn't bother me. I'd watch it again next week.

Great movie. **** out of ****.