Ozon's films are always a favourite of the art-house crowd, who often seem to see them as some kind of clever intellectual truth (and the more sex, particularly rough sex, in them the more intellectual they are deemed).
I thought at first that this was going to have something interesting to say on the disintegration of a marriage but instead the characters were unengaging, dull, self-indulgent and pretentious (the worst kind of middle-class subjects often beloved of French films) and as a result any observations about marriage were lost in the tedium of having to watch these people. The film begins in a striking way, which raised my hopes about what might follow, but I wanted some kind of insight into these characters and why they do what they do, but this film just didn't provide it. As with Swimming Pool, I think this is a case of King's new clothes, people finding something deep and meaningful in it when there is actually very little there at all.
A good idea wasted (as was my afternoon).
I thought at first that this was going to have something interesting to say on the disintegration of a marriage but instead the characters were unengaging, dull, self-indulgent and pretentious (the worst kind of middle-class subjects often beloved of French films) and as a result any observations about marriage were lost in the tedium of having to watch these people. The film begins in a striking way, which raised my hopes about what might follow, but I wanted some kind of insight into these characters and why they do what they do, but this film just didn't provide it. As with Swimming Pool, I think this is a case of King's new clothes, people finding something deep and meaningful in it when there is actually very little there at all.
A good idea wasted (as was my afternoon).