Good concept, poorly executed.

A Major Disappointment

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I loved this film. It is such a great story told beautifully. I don't want to say too much because I think it's better to let the film take you on its journey but it is supremely acted by Marion Cotillard who wholly inhabits Gabrielle and Alex Brudenmahel was just a revelation. He says so much without saying much at all. I would recommend that you skip the critics reviews and just watch the film and judge for yourself.

I watched this at home on DVD from my local library. My wife skipped, she doesn't enjoy reading subtitles. It is mostly in French and I watched it with English subtitles.I got the movie mainly because it features Marion Cotillard. She is a lovely lady and one of the best actresses of the current generation. Here she is Gabrielle, part of a farming family in France that includes her dad and mom, plus a younger sister. We see that she was difficult growing up, what some may call "mean." And also fixated on nudity and sex. Looking like she might never marry, her parents made a deal with one of the workers, a Mr. Rabascal, if he would marry her then they would help set him up with his own masonry business. He agrees, Gabrielle eventually goes along, but she tells him directly that she will never love him and they will not have husband-wife relations. In her magnanimity she tells him she doesn't mind if he goes into the city to hire a prostitute.I will not say much more except to say it is mainly a character study of Gabrielle, how she deals with her difficult personality, in the end trying to achieve some happiness with her husband and son who has a gift for playing the piano.Marion Cotillard is superb.

Marion Cotillard is arresting as a selfish, neurotic young woman who carries her self-imposed burdens into adulthood before an epiphany years later awakes her to the realities of love and life. Cotillard's "Gabrielle" when younger, reveals a selfish, emotionally disturbed young lady believing she has an entitlement to a passionate erotic love life with partners out of her reach. Such leads to her parents' drastic counter-productive remedy of an arranged marriage. I've not read the novel and am unsure if Gabby's physical malady which send her to a sanatorium suggests a cause of her problems or is simply a plot devise. Regardless, the dialog, acting, pacing and photography in this film are first rate! If I had to find fault I'd suggest adding some "clues" and/or nuance to the "mystery" that leads us to the solution But don't miss this fine French film!

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Nicole Garcia (The Adversary, 2002) takes the best-selling novel from Milena Agus and hearkens back to good old-fashioned movie melodrama – with a French twist. Of course, most any project is elevated with the beautiful and talented Marion Cotillard in the lead role. Few can suffer on screen as expertly as Ms. Cotillard, and she conveys that disquiet through most of this story.What is love? You'd best not look to Gabrielle (Cotillard) for clarification. As a young woman, her search for love and sexual fulfillment follows the fantasies of the novels she reads (Wuthering Heights). Her corresponding inappropriate behavior teeters between delusion and hysteria. It's the 1950's in rural France, so her actions and attitude are not much appreciated, and her parents bribe Jose (Alex Brendemuhl), a local bricklayer, to marry Gabrielle. She is then given the choice of (an "arranged") marriage or a mental institution.As a romantic dreamer whose blurred reality expects love to mirror those romance novels, Gabrielle's self-centeredness and failure to grasp reality results in a loveless marriage – and easily one of the most uncomfortable lovemaking scenes in the history of French cinema. Beyond that, severe kidney stones make it impossible for her to bear children. In hopes of "the cure", she is sent for treatment to a spa in the Alps (it's the same spa from Paolo Sorrentino's 2015 film YOUTH).While at the spa, she meets handsome Andre (Louis Garrel), a gravely ill soldier from the Indochina War. Gabrielle imagines Andre to be everything she dreamt a lover should be (except for that whole sickness thing). The contrast between the two love-making sessions is startling, and it seems as though Gabrielle has found her bliss.The years pass after her release from the spa, and Gabrielle makes one mistake after another … blind to what and who is right in front of her … while holding on to the dreamer's dream. She is certainly not a likable person, and is downright cruel to her loyal (and extremely quiet) husband Jose. However, Ms. Cotillard is such an accomplished actress that we somehow pull for Gabrielle to "snap out of it".The novel was adapted by Jacques Fieschi, Natalie Carter and director Garcia, and you'll likely either be a fan or not, depending on your taste for old-fashioned melodrama. Despite numerous awkward moments, it's beautifully photographed by cinematographer Christophe Beaucame. Additionally, the music plays a vital role here – both composer Daniel Pemberton's use of the violin, and the duality of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto that connects Gabrielle's two worlds. You may say she's a dreamer, but I hope she's the only one.