I read the book.
Twice.
I just couldn't understand how a beginner director could transform it in a movie.
It would have been so hard.
The book is so powerful and fragile, sensitive. Philosophical introspection till ... really no limit.
I could't imagine it as a movie.
And indeed: the movie was not impressing me.
Too bad that I watched the movie just immediately after I read the book second time.
The movie can not, could not anyhow, transmit the same emotions, powerful introspection. There is just not enough time in a movie.
I liked some ideas in the movie:
I felt that:
Conclusion:
I liked some ideas in the movie:
- Paloma is filming family through a glass (like for fish)
- Paloma character was nice developed
- some really key phrases from the book were untouched.
- Kakuro gives the books (Anna Karenina ) to Paloma - really very nice
I felt that:
- Mme Michelle character is too less developed. No introspection, all were focused on Paloma's. So some very touching stories are lost (feeling reborn when her teacher calls her name, trauma due to her sister Lissete, etc)
- her switch between the two nature of her was not convincing me. I expected, in the second nature, more humanity from her character, to be warmer.
- the music from Purcell's Opera Didona and Eneas ("the best opera area") was missing (but Confutatis not). It is also of really great effect and I thing it would have been appropriate yet for the ending.
- the "dead nature painting" scene - impressed me as a reader (and other introspection about Art ) - but I agree, it would have been very challenging just to "dare" to introduce it in the movie.
- I didn't felt like in the book: the bourgeois style, the huge 400square meters flats, etc - no time to develop other characters.
Conclusion:
- see movie before the book - could be great I think
- see movie after the book - not convincing for me, but I agree, I had maybe too big expectations. I expected an Amelie Poulaine maybe.