Une nuit sans étoiles

It may be slow, it may be not to everybody's taste and maybe you've got to be in the mood for this extraordinary movie to like it. It's definitely one of those films that are strictly recommended for viewing on the big screen, because otherwise the mood and fascinating concentration might be lost.

I saw this movie on a sunny summer afternoon four months ago at the Munich Film Festival, and I was not at all in the mood for a quiet film, and I might as well add that I'm usually very impatient with "ambitious" stuff and also easily bored… not at all with this one though! I found it an incredibly beautiful work, with a top-notch performance by Corinna Harfouch, who helps the complex narrative with a multi-layered yet easy-to-follow characterization that at times was so moving and suspenseful – it almost took my breath away. And none of this is aroused by the usual and well-known forms of cinematic narrative, plotting or the search for reason. It's a masterly told tale of a search… for meaning, for beauty and the longings of a creative mind. I had no information on this film whatsoever before viewing it – I didn't know anything about the main character, her being famous in Czechoslovakia, and I was not at all aware that the movie was based on the last three letters she wrote, each telling of the same things in slightly changed words… yet I had grasped everything (I felt) of what this was all about.

I've seen lots and lots of movies in my life – I can only recommend this one. It's a one-of-a-kind movie, and it may hit you in the wrong mood – but if you're willing to get involved, it proves most rewarding. A daring piece, and a strong one to evoke the beauty of art, and also the kind of beauty you can only experience in a dark movie theatre.

This movie is incredibly slow... There are movies that need to be slow because it may bring a sense of tension or to bring you in with the characters and their slow way of life, but in this movie it's just painfully slow. I guess you must have an appreciation for the main character, who is a famous 19th century Tchek writer (and a woman too). Since I didn't know her work, I didn't catch on at all. And even if I had, I wouldn't have liked her to be portrayed like this.

In the movie, you follow the last days of her life and a recollection of some of her memories that she writes in some letters. It's in the form of a puzzle, where the screenplay reveals bits and pieces of her life and her illness, in a non-linear fashion. It doesn't even give me an incentive to read her work since the few lines we ear of it seams really bland. As is the movie. I must say that the main actress is good, I'd like to see her in other movies to make up my mind on her talent. The 19th century is also well recreated, which helps just a bit. But forget the rest, it's not just the main character who has a deadly sickness, it's the whole movie.

The German title, fully translated:

Through this night I cannot see any stars

would well describe the movie - it a study in despair, rather than the story of Bozena Nemcova. - heroine of this movie, who lived from 1820 to 1862 " and was a major figure in the Czech national revival" http://www.radio.cz/en/article/59665

She was a talented writer, not a great one, if compared with contemporary world authors like Gustave Flaubert, but important in her time and place. She was born in Vienna in modest circumstances. Her husband was a low-level employee of the Hapsburg empire and while marriage was not happy, it is hard to imagine him to be the utterly coarse and cruel lout and drunk shown in the movie. She separated from her husband in 1850, lived alone, and had a series of affairs. She was called the first Czech feminist.

The acting in the movie was excellent, but it was not able to resurrect the script, set on showing her life as a series of painful episodes.

This is absolutely not a movie for children. Its frequent graphic depictions of uterine bleeding would be terribly upsetting. I do not recommend the movie to adults either. It begins with her funeral and tells you almost nothing about her life, only about the pain caused by her unspecified illness and by her marriage.

I think that B. Nemcova would be offended by this portrait of her. She was not a passive victim of her environment, as shown in one disconnected image after another. She was a brave and intelligent woman, with ideas that were advanced for that century.

It would be wonderful if someone would make a film of her life, her entire life, that put everything in a broader perspective: her suffering in the context of her whole life, her life in the context of her times, her beginnings and successes as well as the apparently bitter end.