Les enfants du siècle

I saw this film in French with Spanish subtitles so I had to read very fast! The photography is beautiful. I had not seen either of the principal actors before but I will look for them again. Miss Binoche made George Sand a real person not just an odd woman! The actor who played Alfred de Musset, showed him as charming but weak, very well done.

Being French, I saw this film at its release. I had no idea about what I might find except that Juliette Binoche was in it. I went there alone. I came out in a crowd.

Romanticism isn't what we think it is. This story IS romantic, not because it's a love story, but because it's a Romantics's story. George Sand and Alfred de Musset were two of our greatest writers. Their works were full of hope, of despair, of melancholy and bitterness. They were revolutionaries. This film is all about the atmosphere of that time, all about the fights and ambitions of these young writers who wanted to change the world and find an unclear future.

This film is one of the few that changed my life, not because of the way it was filmed, or the performance of the actors (though they were absolutely fabulous and I'm looking forward to their next films), it changed my perception of life, made me read some Romantic works (by Sand, Musset, Hugo, Lamartine,... and that's only for the French ones) where I found a "translation" of what I feel when I look to the world in front of me.

That's what this film is all about. It's not a film about a past true story, it's about all of us, everyday.

Wonderful mise-en-scene of a true passion that turned out to a, damaging love to hate you syndrome especially for Musset. Georges and Musset, they can't do with nor without each other. Their love was the spring of their inspiration that triggered their talent but the problem was that this love could feed only one's inspiration at a time.

Wonderful pictures, acting and especially costume design capture us in the late 1880's France which was a very nice experience.

Diane Kury's oppulent film is a mixed bag. In it's favour it features

real life lovers Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel on excellent

form. As Alfred de Musset Magimel gives us a young man

completely out of his mind on a cocktail of opium and absinthe. A

man deeply creative and talented, but unable to function as a

human being. Binoche's George Sand is a strong a determined

woman. The scene where she finds that Musset may die after

overdosing is wonderfully performed with passion and grandeur.

The film comes alive in her eyes. As filmed by Vilko Filac and

dressed by Christian La Croix, Binoche has never looked more

beautiful or sensual.

However Kurys' direction and her screenplay, co-written by

Francois Olivier Rousseau and Murray Head, lacks direction and

understanding of her period. The brothel scenes are particularly

over the top. Yet her direction of her actor is magnificent.

What is missing from Kurys' film most of all however is Sand and

Musset as writers, as creative masters. There is no sense of their

value in the film beyond their doomed love affair.

Les Enfants du Siecle is a mixed bag, but certainly worth a look.

I loved this movie and I don't know to what extent this movie is near to the original story. I have read the life of George Sand and was amazed by her character. A character so tough when it has to do with freedom of doing what one wants. George Sand was one of my best female characters next to Mary Wolstoncroft, Jane Austin, Emmeline Pankhurst and the famous five. Juliette Binoche has played the role magnificently close and made it feel like I was watching the original Sand.

The love story is so beautiful specially the scene when Benoit Magimel sleeps on the street ground under the rain when Sand comes to visit him in her carriage. Waw!... I mean this is a charming scene, it says a lot about the feelings of love.