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Leaving (2009)

A very dry slice of life, and a common and awful slice of life--the breakup of a seemingly okay marriage. It's a very modern, well off, pan European series of events, mostly taking place in the south of France. There is devastation, violence, sex, hurt children, hurt friends, and mostly a lot of pain between the ecstasies. And I suppose that's how it really goes down. Fair enough.

But not necessarily the most engaging movie. I'm not talking about being entertained, but about being lifted, or made to rethink something serious, or maybe even be swept away in something lyrical. Not so. This is deliberately (or not) a study in realism, and yet a glossy one, with some neat ends tied up here and there. I mean, it may be a series of fairly realistic events, but this is a simplified, "nice" world.

The one really solid reason to watch this is the stellar, nuanced, deeply felt performance by British actress Kristin Scott Thomas. The range of moods is amazing, and moving, if you can get absorbed otherwise.

it's very deadly and absolutely out of control. when you fall for a man or woman, it's just like a sudden addiction, the lust and passion, the sexual desire are so strong that all the existing relationship, families, kids...anything would suddenly meaningless. it's an incurable blindness and nothing can be reasoned or rationalized by logic. this film just told us such a crazy obsession so destructive and dangerous. when you fall for a man and woman so suddenly with such huge impact, the morality, faithfulness and loyalty to your old existing relationship will be suddenly bounced like a bad check, the existing old checking and saving bank accounts related and honored to that check seem to abruptly become empty or overdrawn. an affair, an adultery would be just like that person suddenly decides to open a brand new bank account to another banking system. a regularly taking care of bonsai is suddenly forgotten. we have seen so many cases like this in our daily lives, and so many movies also portrayed such incidents. and this film is a great example to show you how a normal woman suddenly lost her marbles and so mysteriously fell for another man without any obvious reasons. a very weird case but in the mean times, seems to be also so understandable.

The upper middle-class lady meets worker and a passionate affair takes place. That's not an uncommon theme in our hemisphere, but it's very easy to parodize. Not at least when it's taken so seriously as here.

Of course the subject is a serious one, like all love stories are, both on film and in reality. But on film the rules are fairly known. We are aware of the signs, we expect a certain plot and certain things to happen and I'm sorry to say that this film doesn't make us disappointed, Or perhaps that's exactly what we are supposed to be and also are.

Don't give us another southern French passion story, until the genre is renewed.

Kristin Scott Thomas has tended to play hard-ass women who keep their emotions in check, but in LEAVING the ice-princess doesn't just melt, she gives off steam! The sex scenes between Suzanne, the bored Parisian housewife, and her beefy Spanish builder are fairly bracing; it's clearly not his intellect that she's fallen for. Swapping her sterile modern house (irony here: her dull husband's a surgeon) for a seedy suburban apartment doesn't seem to faze her, but drama - indeed, melodrama - is lurking on the horizon. The director gives most of the ending away at the beginning (echoes of Sunset Boulevard), which I thought was a mistake.

Wife takes lover, tragedy ensues: it's a hoary old plot that shouldn't work but it does, thanks entirely to Scott Thomas's incandescent performance. Hopefully, she'll win awards for this.

She cheats, she lies, she leaves her family. You'd have every right to hate Suzanne, yet you don't. The one you hate is her self-righteous husband. It's nothing short of a miracle how Kristin Scott-Thomas and Yvan Attal pull it off. Admittedly, the script makes sure her betrayal brings out the worst in him, but I doubt you would take her side so easily if you read about it in a novel. It rings so true because writer-director Catherine Corsini works with a fine script and a first-rate cast. The way Sam cuts Suzanne off from the family fortune may be stretching the facts of civil law a tad, but it goes to show that there's no equality without economic independence. Despite its strong social message, the movie keeps you on the edge of your seat like a thriller. Take your family.