Mal de pierres

Another bright movie from Marillon Cotillard, the very talented French actress who shines in other ways in this limited, averagely deep production. Everything is on point in a simple, semi-impactful and mysterious way. The beginning was well developed alongside the middle, just the end and what precede it was a little average, hurting the production in a minimal to the sense way.

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 7
• Production value/impact: 7
• Development: 7.5
• Realism: 7
• Entertainment: 7
• Acting: 8
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 8
• VFX: 8
• Music/score/sound: 7
• Depth: 7
• Logic: 6
• Flow: 7.5
• Drama/romance: 6.5
• Ending: 6.

'From the Land of the Moon' tells the tale of Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) who develops an unfortunate - and unreciprocated - sexual obsession with her local teacher in 1950s rural France. Her mother hastily arranges for her to be married off to itinerant Spanish workman José (Alex Brendemühl), who can not even be bothered shaving for their wedding day. Gabrielle resigns herself to a loveless marriage - charging José 200 francs for sex - before she has to stay at a Swiss spa to be treated for 'stones sickness' (not, as you might think, an obsession with Mick Jagger et al, but kidney stones). At the spa she meets aristocratic soldier André (Louis Garrel), with whom she develops a deep (though, to her disappointment, platonic) relationship. But when André leaves and Gabrielle returns to José, how will her experiences have changed her?

I spent much of the film trying to work out how old Gabrielle is supposed to be: when the film opens the story suggests she is the equivalent of a sixth form student, but Cotillard, in her forties, hardly looks the part. In other respects, though, she is perfect, conveying with the minimum of fuss Gabrielle's undercurrent of frustration with her lot in life - and the look she gives the man with whom she has ended up in the film's very last shot speaks volumes. Brendemühl and Garrel are pretty much Cotillard's supporting players (after all, neither of *them* has an Oscar!) but both make the most of their parts, again without resorting to over-acting.

Subtlety is the watchword in setting the film's period, too: director Nicole Garcia choosing to express it with costumes, interior decorations and cars, rather than beating the viewer around the head with pop songs from the time as other directors might be tempted to do. There no big explosions, no screeching-wheeled car chases; this is simply a film about human emotions - and contains a twist I certainly did not see coming. Well worth a viewing.

Its hard to start where. I mean the movie is like an eternally flowing river. So you simply don't know where it started or ends. Just like Gabrielle's life, feelings, emotions, love....oh the list is long. Marion is fantastic! She is the live wire of the movie. She takes you wherever she wants to go, along with her journey. Her intensity, stature, fervor has always been her identity or trademark in any movie she acts in. Jose is equally good with his supposedly subdued character. But his silence, that mostly lives in, reflected through his razor sharp eyes hangs on your head like a dagger. I am not too sure of Lt. Andre's character. As to me, was the weakest cast in the movie. True, with his illness there was nothing much he could do in the role, but his imposed vampire like look didn't help much either, to build whatever left to be build.

Daniel Pemberton's Music was awesome and soothing. Use of violin in an alluring pitch in many intense scenes was spellbinding. Chris captures gorgeous landscapes and close-ups. Nicole has done a fantastic job bunching up all these talents together. Simply Fantastic! I will live a long time mesmerizing on this beautifully crafted movie. Excellent!

This movie deserves a generous 9/10!

I watched this at home on DVD from my local library. My wife skipped, she doesn't enjoy reading subtitles. It is mostly in French and I watched it with English subtitles.

I got the movie mainly because it features Marion Cotillard. She is a lovely lady and one of the best actresses of the current generation.

Here she is Gabrielle, part of a farming family in France that includes her dad and mom, plus a younger sister. We see that she was difficult growing up, what some may call "mean." And also fixated on nudity and sex. Looking like she might never marry, her parents made a deal with one of the workers, a Mr. Rabascal, if he would marry her then they would help set him up with his own masonry business. He agrees, Gabrielle eventually goes along, but she tells him directly that she will never love him and they will not have husband-wife relations. In her magnanimity she tells him she doesn't mind if he goes into the city to hire a prostitute.

I will not say much more except to say it is mainly a character study of Gabrielle, how she deals with her difficult personality, in the end trying to achieve some happiness with her husband and son who has a gift for playing the piano.

Marion Cotillard is superb.

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Nicole Garcia (The Adversary, 2002) takes the best-selling novel from Milena Agus and hearkens back to good old-fashioned movie melodrama – with a French twist. Of course, most any project is elevated with the beautiful and talented Marion Cotillard in the lead role. Few can suffer on screen as expertly as Ms. Cotillard, and she conveys that disquiet through most of this story.

What is love? You'd best not look to Gabrielle (Cotillard) for clarification. As a young woman, her search for love and sexual fulfillment follows the fantasies of the novels she reads (Wuthering Heights). Her corresponding inappropriate behavior teeters between delusion and hysteria. It's the 1950's in rural France, so her actions and attitude are not much appreciated, and her parents bribe Jose (Alex Brendemuhl), a local bricklayer, to marry Gabrielle. She is then given the choice of (an "arranged") marriage or a mental institution.

As a romantic dreamer whose blurred reality expects love to mirror those romance novels, Gabrielle's self-centeredness and failure to grasp reality results in a loveless marriage – and easily one of the most uncomfortable lovemaking scenes in the history of French cinema. Beyond that, severe kidney stones make it impossible for her to bear children. In hopes of "the cure", she is sent for treatment to a spa in the Alps (it's the same spa from Paolo Sorrentino's 2015 film YOUTH).

While at the spa, she meets handsome Andre (Louis Garrel), a gravely ill soldier from the Indochina War. Gabrielle imagines Andre to be everything she dreamt a lover should be (except for that whole sickness thing). The contrast between the two love-making sessions is startling, and it seems as though Gabrielle has found her bliss.

The years pass after her release from the spa, and Gabrielle makes one mistake after another … blind to what and who is right in front of her … while holding on to the dreamer's dream. She is certainly not a likable person, and is downright cruel to her loyal (and extremely quiet) husband Jose. However, Ms. Cotillard is such an accomplished actress that we somehow pull for Gabrielle to "snap out of it".

The novel was adapted by Jacques Fieschi, Natalie Carter and director Garcia, and you'll likely either be a fan or not, depending on your taste for old-fashioned melodrama. Despite numerous awkward moments, it's beautifully photographed by cinematographer Christophe Beaucame. Additionally, the music plays a vital role here – both composer Daniel Pemberton's use of the violin, and the duality of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto that connects Gabrielle's two worlds. You may say she's a dreamer, but I hope she's the only one.