Bem-Me-Quer, Mal-Me-Quer

Well, this is certainly a fast forward movie to be rented, with many parts that could be zapped past.

It does explore how one grows up and deals with the pains of youth, and surprisingly, it does end with a splash that isn't expected, yet makes sense in review the movie.

It's certainly worth seeing along with a field trip to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Southern California to understand the background of the story and to get a better grasp of the complexities of emotions that many have to deal with even today.

But it isn't a movie that is very deep nor giving. The viewer is left sitting there with the ending, and yet wondering why bother as the movie does deliver fully in engrossing the viewer and placing them into another world. It is a third person movie and you are that 3rd person -- a casual observer never to really enter.

A first draft, by a child, compared to Schindler's List.

Essentially, this movie has all the makings for..well, a better one. Claire Danes plays a quiet girl with sad eyes, and unloving parents who spends most of her time with her Grandmother. One day in english class, she reads aloud a poem written about Jude Law's character, "Ethan", who is the stereotypical jock/playboy on campus. The two get together...blah blah blah..

I won't tell you anymore except the the ending is VERY dissapointing. It's as though the movie just, ends. You don't see it coming, you feel like it should be starting to get good, and the plot holes filled up..well, they aren't, and it does. It's really quite aggrivating. Jude Law and Claire Danes performances are great, but not quite enough to push this movie onto my favourite list. But, don't let me discourage you, it's worth the rent.

For me this film is unsuccessful in intermingling the issue of antisemitism with the coming of age of a relatively studious young woman. On one level the Jude Law character might be only marginally deeper than his disgustingly callow friends. He is attracted by the young woman's seriousness and relatively shy affection for him but this attraction is offset by her social conservatism. The depth of any antisemitism in him or amongst his silly friends is never explored. In the end the motivation of his character, and the point of the film, elude me. An interpretation that springs to mind is that gentiles do not feel the significance of the holocaust, that they trivialise it. Part of coming of age for jewish girls is therefore that they should (or simply do) experience failed love affairs with gentiles. The fact that these affairs fail for these reasons is somehow constructively educational for the girls. I truly hope this is not intended to be the message.

I was subjected to this movie a couple of nights ago and I have to say - it is the worst film I've seen in a long time. The whole story is sickly sweet. Clare Danes looks (and acts) like she is about 12. The writing is terrible - it has some of the cheesiest lines ever. It is worth watching for the tacky zoom shot in the very last scene. Don't waste your time.

A girl who loves to stay with her grandmother who was a jew survivor from the "camps" of Hitler, but hides her story, falls in love with an athlete guy in a high-school where the teens have prejudice against her and her way of life. Sweet, but slow movie, although Danes and Moreau are superb.