Pacific Palisades

A complete misfire. Per se, the subject matter is quite interesting: this movie deals with the feeling of overwhelming alienation that one may feel as a European in the United States, especially in L.A., when one tries to really relate to other human beings, and not just take pretty pictures to bring home to your friends. Like Antonioni brilliantly demonstrated by its portrayal of America in Zabriskie Point, or Wim Wenders in Paris Texas, the US sometimes feel really inhuman to an European eye, to an European heart.

Now I think that was the original intention of that movie, but the result is just a muddled comedy-drama where no empathy can be felt towards Sophie Marceau's character.

Where Wenders and Antonioni showed how foreign the US looks to us Europeans, Bernard Schmitt only gives us the flat B-grade pictures that you may find in any botched movie from almost anywhere in the world.

Sophie Marceau has some limited talent, when hysterically pushed by Zulawski. But here, when she tries to play despair, she just comes out hysterically ridiculous. There's nothing alive in this slice of life.

Of course, she is an extremely beautiful woman, and may be pleasant to look at when there's nothing else to be interested in. But if that's what you're looking for, try to find those not-so-rare moments in the history of moviemaking where feminine beauty really becomes transcendent, like in Pabst's Pandora's box.