People are voting emotionally.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There is something very beautiful about it though I feel I can't just put my finger on it but it is super simple yet super effective and impacting movie and performance especially by Isabelle Huppert...she is so vulnerable, simple, sad and natural...

Moving and memorable psychological drama with outstanding performances. This seemingly simple tale tells us a lot about the way social class and background colour not just our habits and tastes, but our very being. And this influence is not always benign : often we become the owners of mindsets that blind us to the value, or the legitimate needs, of others.France is an apt setting for this kind of tale. On the one hand it is a country with a strict, a VERY strict, social hierarchy, on the other hand everybody is supposed to be free and equal (and, of course, very much in favour of freedom and equality). The resulting contradictions, compromises and tensions strew the landscape with snares for the vulnerable. Be warned : the movie is not a cheery one, it contains a deep tragedy. Dutch poet Werumeus Buning once wrote a poem about the life of roses being destroyed not through a storm, but through a soft, tender, delicate rainfall. The context of the poem is different but the image could very well apply to one of the lead characters, who meets good things - love, romance, emotional awakening, a bit of excitement - and, slowly but surely, gets damaged beyond recognition. All together : "The pleasure of love lasts but an instant, the grief caused by love can last a lifetime"...

The student from Paris and his friends are intellectuals. He reads Le Monde. He is stamped by his background. The girl is in love with love. Everywhere she turns, there is love and passion evident, even through the hotel's thin walls. She only wishes to please and outwardly doesn't project herself as a self-regulated person. Her lower class background is clear before she goes on vacation where she meets the student. Although they stay in the same hotel, this is about the only thing they have in common beside the bed they share, but being removed from their normal lives just delays the obvious. Love is idyllic at first for everyone. She is hopelessly adrift among his friends in Paris and cannot communicate with them. This class based depiction is consistent with how many French view that one's birth divides a person from the other classes. The class-based system exists here in the South, but I have a feeling that passion and love and familiarity more readily breaks down barriers than those 30 years ago in France.This is a movie well worth seeing.

This film is about class, pure and simple. The shy Hubert comes from a lower class than her male lover. He can't accept her because she's not an intellectual like he is. He can't appreciate her quiet beauty because it is a nonverbal beauty, and he lives in a world of words and books.Hubert's performance is wonderful.