Passion simple

Summery: Lifetime/Harlequined treatment; female desire as desperation

The French make great films. And we are fortunate in the US to get the best of them. But as a frequent visitor to France, I can tell you there are also some pretty bad French films -- and Passion Simple is one of those.

The characters and their actions don't make any sense. Essentially while there is a veneer of physicality, and a forced artificial, frankly bad, eroticism; the main thing going on is a woman with an obsessive emotional attachment to a married guy. Ok that happens. A lot. Women often enough imagine a guy for what they are not. And guys play that along. But this film brings nothing, new, dramatic, or even interesting to the table in the gigantic genre of women falling for a guys who lies, or worse yet is apathetic.

It was a very good adaptation of a very short book. It is nothing new exactly but it really shows what passion looks like from the inside.

The woman is head over heels in love with a Russian man, who is possibly a spy. She does not care that he is married, or that he decides when and where they meet. She relinquishes all power in this relationship that she has succombed to. She still manages to work but can barely function as a mother. Everything and everyone come second to this man she knows nothing about. They don't have an intellectual or spiritual connection. All they do is have sex together but she is addicted to him and there is nothing she can do about it.

Don't expect any action. It's a film about a French modern woman, a mother and a college professor, who yearns for a beautiful and mysterious man that she can never hope to be with. It's a good film from a good book whose title says it all without any pretence or complicated ambitions.

I must say that I didn't expect that I would watch more than 15 minutes of this movie.

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised that somehow the movie got me interested.

I'm a man.

This movie is essentially from a woman viewpoint. Perhaps it would therefore appeal to many women rather than men ?

Regardless, the central character actress got my attention into her spiralling descent into a highly addictive, highly dependent physical relationship.

It contrasts with her life which is being an intellectual , a lecturer at the University.

It also doesn't agree with her role as a single mother.

Good movie that shows how "love", or at least the perception of being in love, can lead to disaster.

Though like many others I believe the slow pace of the film could bother but still the script and the environment of the film is one to remember The film perfectly describes the empty and vague life of a woman stuck in a wrong and toxic relationship where she can't come out of unless she confronts the bitter reality that who she is in love with is just an imaginary image of a dominant guy with no respect to her.

A better film to view the love of a woman in an insecure and wrong bound is The Lover.

A great scene in the film shows the main role watching the great film of Duras "Hiroshima mon amour" which has the same energy for the audience.

I may recommend simple passion to all the other women to be reminded how the wrong and insecure love can destroy us.

Eternal myth of extreme love between two persons unable to be together. This time the story-telling is refreshingly original without overacting and other art-house pretence.

The erotic scenes are many and illustrate the wild and animal nature of the passion.

The story is a lesson to the spouses stuck in the boredom.of peaceful family life: beware of the forest fire.