Les enfants du siècle

Contrary to its title, this is not a movie about children in an unnamed century. Instead this movie is about the love/hate relationship between French writers Alfred Musset and George Sand. They are two souls who have a mutual and affectionate understanding of one another until a voyage to Italy reveals their true nature. Passion, envy, trust, betrayal and forgiveness are all brilliantly encompassed in the relationship between Musset and Sand.

I enoyed this movie, though some may find it dull and slow. You may need to be a die-hard romantic or like well-costumed period dramas to watch this movie. My harshest criticism for this film would be that of it's length and even though I enjoyed the turbulent relationship shown in this film, there were times when I thought that their affair had ended for good only for them to reconcile a few scenes later.

This movie is handsomely photographed with wonderful costumes by Christian LaCroix and most magnificent of all, the actors don't seem like they're acting at all. Juliette Binoche is spectacular, both beauitful and natural in her potrayal of Sand. Benoit Magimel is splendid as Alfred Musset. Don't expect historical accuracy, and if you're a romantic at heart, you will not be disappointed.

If Romanticism, as a movement, can be defined as an "infinite longing" which combines passion and erotic tension with death, despair, and the cycles of nature, then Kurys film portrayal is aptly named and her protagonists--Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand--are indeed children of their century.

The key to understanding the point of this film is to think of it as a painting. It does not give you an insider's view of the relationship between these two literary giants; it does not break down their psychology; and you do not even understand why you, as an audience member, should like either of them. Yet their obsessive love was a monument for the first major artistic movement of the 19th century. Kurys paints them as Delacroix would--in all their lurid color, capturing the details of high emotion without explaining a thing. As painting on film, Les Enfants succeeds as wildly as any Romantic dreamscape and, thus, captures the mood of that era and the sentiment which spawned it more perfectly than 1,000 words on the subject.

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 was really hoping to find some special quality in the two main characters that I could like. However, self absorbed people are usually too melodramatic about every single aspect of their lives and so I had no sympathy for their predicament at all. So, I settled back and enjoyed Julliet Binochet at work. The film was meticulously crafted and the settings and costumes were wonderful, so I got the time machine effect, too. If you like historical melodrama, you might enjoy this.

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.