Le château de cartes

The great things about this film make me forget the obvious concessions to box office: the uselessness of Tommy Lee's over dramatic character, or the cheesy ending.

The beauty of this is all in the multiple structures presented to us, both physically and metaphorically, and how they are layered in such a way that moving one affects all the others, like a house of cards. How they are put together is flawed, and it lacks the subtleties and hooks of any Medem script. But it's a glorious try, a world of connections of all sorts.

The first gate to this world are the Maya pyramids, so carefully photographed in the clever initial sequence in Mexico. There we are given key concepts to interpret the whole thing: The ascending dynamic of this (highly spiritual) shape, the tragedy of the father's death, which triggers the whole plot, and the moon – introduced in a clumsy way, as the cosmic witness to the tragedy and as some old folk Indian tale.

Later we fold the idea of the abstract structure that is the "key" to our girl's mind into the idea of a physical shape, that of a spiral, conceptually close to the conception of a Maya pyramid. The girl actually builds the thing, using common cards and some Tarot cards, providing us another key to another abstract structured cosmic world: metaphorical links between cards and several realities; a whole cosmology of its own.

In between you get hints at other parallel, strong structures: 1 – before becoming an autist the girl spoke three languages; 2 – trees… she climbs them, repeating the ascending movement, and she disguises herself as one… she becomes it!; 3 – the construction site and the crane, an obvious reference, as it is the fact that the mother is an engineer, a designer of structures (the 3d stuff does sound middle- aged to our BIM days…)

The spiral is replicated in a greater scale by the mother, she actually builds her own gate to her daughter (building up for the obvious climax). What you get is the beautiful idea of a physical structure as the metaphor for a spiritual link, and the act of building as a symbol of reaching for someone. This is underscored by the seemingly shared dream between our girls, which i found pretty lame. So the result is a sort of maternal built love. You have to love it!

Everyone I know thinks this movie is weird, until I make them rewatch the beginning and pay close attention. Then they love it.

Whoever trashed this movie regarding the autism obviously did not watch it. The child was NOT austistic. She was trying to handle her father's death with things she learned from her Mayan archaeologist friend.

I think if you have any brain in your head and have an attention span large enough to actually watch the whole movie, it is thoroughly enjoyable.

There is no doubt that somewhere out there there is someone who loved this film, who adores it and watches it all the time, fed up by the bad reviews. That person is obviously not me, as I can see how this mind-boggling movie could have a following like that, but I positively hated it.

I rented it because of Tommy Lee Jones and Kathleen Turner, and the movie taught me a valuable lesson: listen to the critics and DON'T rent a movie that looks bad because of two stars in it. Both are given horrible, underdeveloped, unlikeble characters and asked to turn them into lovable, realistic characters. They failed miserable, not because they can't, but because they won't. The film is THAT bad.

Which ever studio exec who green lighted this project must've been high, or drunk. Or both. The story makes no sense whatsoever and is immensely boring. If you are a fan of either Turner or Jones, skip this one and instead see The Fugitive or War of The Roses again.

This film was educational about the problems that autistic children face. The part of the film that stays with me is when Tommy Lee Jones's character states that a lot of autistic children are misdiagnosed as crack babies or something else....even demonic possession. I work with autistic children and the repetition shown by the children in the movie is displayed. If you want to see a healthy environment for autustic children, this movie has it.

I prefer to see it as a poetic film. I teach in classes with autistic students, I was confronted with some cases . But, in same measure I am seduced by fairy tales. The death of father can reate strong refuges. And, in this film, the refuge is just well projected. Because it is a film about a six years old girl, in touch with Mayan myth - a myth reminding the stories about the rabbit on the moon from my childhood - admirable acting, moving end . A film about truth, with few unrealistic pink parts but real nice for understand, in fair manner, the other.