Les destinées sentimentales

after eagerly seeking out this film, i found myself totally bored..it was too long,had no movement..although very beautiful..but the beauty wore thin after 40 minutes..performances ok...but in the end dull,dull, dull..lots of pottery but not much else..

Chardonne's novel is a masterfully written tale about two characters as they spiral through and explore love as life's most essential element. The director captured it beautifully as a tone, a feeling, and as an overall impression of how the characters react to their journey. Unfortunately, he left out the milestones, those transitions a character makes, inwardly, as outward events bear in on them. The audience is asked to make gigantic leaps of logic as the character's trust in and dependence on Love changes, evolves with age. Mind you this is a three hour epic, so it is not for want of time that the production misses the mark, only the screenwriter's discipline, and here, again, the director got involved where he ought not be.

I just saw this picture and it gave me the impression of Assayas trying to give us a symbolic message on globalization, French versus American markets, and at the end he delivers a movie about the film industry itself.As they say, do it for the French market!

Cinematography is at its best, rhythm of images goes perfectly along character´s feelings at the moment.

Beautiful ball sequence and very good explanation on ceramic and china industry at beginning of 20th century, breath taking swiss sceneries.

I WW sequence is also very well done.

Emmanuelle Beart and Isabelle Huppert are splendorous,La Huppert appears less but is much more intense.

Also got the impression that novel had much more to offer than the 3 hours film version, but this is film, anyway, and script is script.

Beginning and ending with a death scene, love is the only worthy thing in life.

For the first time Assayas has left the contemporary Paris settings of his films and tried his hands on a period picture, set in a small village in the South, a china factory in Limoges, the Swiss Alps and on the battlefields of WW1. The film is a brave attempt to revive Luchino Visconti`s lavish epics but unfortunately lacks the Italian`s breath. The story could have easily been told in 90 minutes (instead of 180!), and even if some scenes and locations look gorgeous (especially the ballroom-scene!) and Assayas` (and cameraman Eric Gautier`s) usual trademark, the nervous camerawork, goes down well with a period picture, all that isn`t enough to hold our attention for such a long time. Nothing in this films can really surprise us, not even the beauty of Emmanuelle Beart or the acting quality of Isabelle Huppert, and as the film potters along one hopes Assayas will rapidly go contemporary again. Not really bad but definitely ways apart from the quality of his earlier films.

This movie is either too short or too long.

If it tries to follow a book and to show the whole life of several dozen people, it should have been made as a mini (not too short) serial. I still remember how much I've enjoyed first TV version of The Forsyte Saga, made in 26 episodes.

There are also far too many characters in the movie. (I know France is a big nation, but they didn't have to show all of them in one movie.) For the first hour you even don't know who the main characters are (unless you've read carefully opening credits). Later during the movie some of them never appear again, some appear when you've already forgotten who they were and you don't care for them any more (as well as main characters and probably the director himself). Some get a significant footage in certain part of the movie and then never show again, being completely irrelevant to the plot (or having a subplot of their own that never develops). Yes, life looks that way, you can suddenly meet a person you haven't met for ages, but life lasts decades and you can't compress it into 180 minutes.

The movie promises very much in first hour (though this extreme number of characters obstructs your attention and complicates following the plot - and sometimes you wonder if there is any). Ball scene (often mentioned in other comments) and some casual talking scenes are marvelous in best French tradition.

But suddenly, as if the director discovered that his movie should last more than twelve hours if he kept the same rhythm, we jump along the years and we have some important things just mentioned as if someone waking from coma now and then and getting a few basic informations before losing conscience again.

The final hour is the best, but I'm afraid many people haven't seen it, either because of giving up, or simply falling asleep while trying to find who is who and what is he doing. Even those with best attention, who could solve this two questions, had no chance to answer the third one - why. Maybe we, who stayed awake till the end, managed to understand the main characters, but it is not a compliment for a 180 hours long work.

Some people compared this movie to Visconti's works. I'd agree, as I find Visconti the most boring of all overrated directors (and, just to mention, I respect Tarkovsky, like Tornatore and adore Bergmann - and ignore action movies).

Except making a serial, this movie could have been made watchable in two other ways. First, it could be made without middle part - after 1900 events we could have skipped into WWII without losing anything. Second, Assayan could have made what Kazan did with Steinbeck's East of Eden - chose one part of the novel, one plot and cut away the rest. We could have lost characters like Louise, Aline and her friend (?), Fayet etc, but I couldn't care less for them anyway. Maybe someone would find it a blasphemy for the literature, but making people yawn and bore isn't a favor to it either.