Brownian Movement

The star's write up in the current New Yorker Magazine led me to this film. With all the predictable, derivative fare these days, it is a welcome relief. I lament all the panning user reviews, entirely missing the point.

Charlotte the brilliant research physician reminds one of the Good Doctor and Astrid Neilsen in her extraordinary professional abilities. But unlike them, she passes for neurotypical. Her relationship with her pre-school-age son is normal as apple pie.

The linguistic fragmentation of her daily life portends what will happen. She is German. She is married to an American. English is spoken at home and at work. Official stuff in Brussels is in French. The language of the streets is Flemish.

She has a crack-up, taking the form of sexual acting out with unattractive, Flemish-speaking men. The lurid sex scenes make the sheer perverseness vivid. She has encountered ugly bodies alive and dead in her time, after all. The sex is much like the drinking in Die Tage des Weines und der Rosen (1962). Only if those scenes are misunderstood out of context can one think this is mere soft-core porn.

Against all odds, her husband stands by her as the repercussions blow back. Perhaps he would not have done so, had she not been such a good lay. The moral of the story? When someone in your life experiences a crack-up, the right thing to do is be there for him/her.

While recovering, she gives birth to twins. The symbolism cannot get heavier-handed than that!

I think this film stands on the shoulders of Ekel (1965) and Belle de jour - Schöne des Tages (1967).

Dull. Not a long movie, but it feels long. Just drifts from the first minute to the last, and ultimately goes nowhere.

Quite pointless.

Charlotte rents a secret apartment. She lives with Max and their son Benjamin in Brussels. She's a researcher professor and she takes some of her male patients to the secret apartment to have sex. She encounters one of those men later and violently attacks him. She goes to therapy with Max and she loses her license to practice. Next, they're in India with the new addition of twins but it's not as good as it first appears to be.

There is little dialog especially with the large number of sex scenes. It's a quiet movie. My main problem with that is the lack of emotions for much of the movie. Sandra Hüller plays the cold lead character. She never really lets the audience into the character. Nanouk Leopold is the writer/director. In between the sex scenes, this is a character study movie but it doesn't necessary do a good job. There are little snippets of insight but a whole lot of nothing.

What a piece of rubbish, flip the genders and the man is protrayed as a deceitful pig. It's no wonder a majority still have conflicting views of equality vs their own entitlements to chivalry and everything else accompanying after watching then believing utter rubbish like this. Especially in a society where in reality all genders are equally gulty, likely to and do engage in all such immoral behaviour yet ths kind of dichotomy, continue thinking and claiming themselves as victims in some form or another. Just another adultress portrayed as the poor victim movie rather than the protaginist and agressor - but then that wouldn't sell movies and that is the whole point of this genre by always selling a fantastical notion of one hypocritically always having moral superiority over the other regardless of the same crime committed

This movie is simply fantastic. Shots are incredibly beautiful with minimalist presentation. Delicate and sensitive. Loyal yet uncompromising. The moves by the protagonist are bold and way ahead of our times. Let's not be the arbiter of "morality" here. Passing judgement based on the male perspective of what the characters are expected to do or by the cultural standards that we have grown accustomed to or expect, is juvenile. If you are conditioned enough to look for messages in a movie then you are missing the forest.