The only burning question I came from this movie asking myself was: was didn't French men in the second quarter of the 19th c. Ever seem to comb their hair?
Not only was Pete Doherty's performance monochromatically lackluster - but his hair was so constantly in his eyes that I, for one, simply could not get past wanting to just hand him a comb and yell: Try it, dude!!!!!
Ugh, thruout the flick, it looks like that affected coff of his literally likely has small infestations of bugs in it.
So, enough of that, you get it - annoying, repulsive.
As for the rest of it: for a period piece the sets were elaborate - albeit limited as they were in range (a "period" chandelier'd salon, or oak tables dining, or candle lit bed room here, a forested field there, a series of scenes from the same bumpy rural carriage ride) - the costuming was studied for accuracy, the tonality was period "sepia by candlelight", the casting utterly banal - extravagantly buxom "society" women, wizened clerics and old men, crocheting elderly matrons, oh so merrily square-dancing albeit grimy workers, etc etc etc
On the bright side, Charlotte Gainsbourg was, as always, excellent - always elegantly charming in a very simply way - so sorry she got mired in this swamp muck of a thing - chemistry w. Doherty? Zero - I don't blame her, that hair ...(and likely just as well for her character since his - 19th haute bourgeois debauchee - likely suffered his unremitting gloom of existential angst from a foully perduring case of physical syphilis than anything "cerebral"
An oh, the musical soundtracks were completely out of joint - inexplicable as choices.
