EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

mike3386 Wonder why this movie only has seven User Reviews? Here, I'll tell you . . . If this movie represents what 30-something has become - especially for women - I'm glad I'm both old and male. A too-perfect architect meets another too-perfect person (described in the movie info as "strange", for no discernible reason whatsoever) and dabbles in too-perfect sex for reasons that are never made clear, only to arrive back home to his clinging and equally beautiful, albeit too-competitive, blond wife who begs him never to leave her. He immediately expresses his undying love for her then sets up more trysts with the brunette beauty in Toronto, then later sees his blond wife kissing another . . . wait for it . . . WOMAN! Worse, he doesn't ask her about it until much later when she has some type of too-perfect anxiety breakdown.Then he goes to a too-perfect - female - doctor FRIEND because he thinks he might have contracted "something" in Toronto . . . and we ain't talking a common cold. When he gets nervous being examined she assures him that she sees at least a dozen penises every day . . . we are left to wonder if she means in her medical practice or socially. From this awkward - yet titillating (he admits to her) - experience, we have to see the totally unpleasant thing of an old guy - his work associate - being sick in the hospital, then dying . . . all totally ugly to too-perfect people.Somewhere the wife sleeps surrounded by his shotguns, which he refers to as "rifles" . . . proving that he should not be allowed near anything resembling a firearm, and neither should his too-perfect-anxiety-ridden-wife. The movie ends - sorta - after he gets called upon to design an abbey in Paris where he runs into the Toronto beauty, now slightly older and wearing glasses . . . he is also slightly older, but still too-perfect, and is with a pert young thing, leaving us to wonder if it is wife #2 or another fling as the movie ends with too-perfect-HGTV shots of houses he apparently designed . . . or maybe they were just boxes with windows . . . I fergit . . . I wuz getting sleepy.

abisio The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions were the only two movies about a group of unlikable people talking and talking and talking that I enjoyed repeatedly and still once in a while I watch them again. I enjoyed other Arcand movies too; so I can state that is one of my preferred directors and found his subjects matters quite interesting and his approach original.Well "La Regne de la Beaute" (which translates in "The reign of Beauty") is not the case. The whole movie on precious scenery after the other; beautiful people in each frame; perfectly dressed and even the music is beautiful; but what was the point of all that?.The intellectual (but overall shallow) bourgeois French / Canadian society it is one of his preferred subjects; as it is the declining health care in Canada (or at least in Quebec); but none of these themes are quite developed here.The infidelity of a young successful architect without considering his wife's slow descending into madness; could be an statement about a society that became so cold that family is no longer important (none of the characters has kids and nobody really seems to care about infidelities or jealously ) At the end is about a year in the life of a group of people with lots of personal issues resolved in an absolute cold manner.I will perhaps seat through the movie again; but at first sight colder than all the snow in Quebec.

ElClaudio Most critics have scorned at this movie for not being the usual politically, critically engaged Denys Arcand movie. Arcand started by exposing the many ills of a corrupt and dominant liberal (in the economic sense) society, used a lot of sarcasm in later movies to depict the ills of large state bureaucracies. This movie makes no exception as he stages architecture juries and again Quebec's health system. I do not agree with some of his reductionist statements, but I do love all of his movies for being pure art. "Le règne de la beauté" is by far his most achieved artistic statement, whereas he brings out the beauty of all the characters,making them so endearing, and of course showing the best sceneries across the four seasons in the province he truly loves.

mb9607 Being a huge fan of ''Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain'' and of ''Les Invasions Barbares'' I was anticipating this film to be pretty awesome until I read reviews that were saying that even though the images are absolutely stunning, the movie was empty. Well I definitely agree about the images, but the film wasn't empty at all. It was a realistic look at the life of a beautiful, successful young adult. The characters are ''modern'' if I can use such a term. They admit to cheat on their partner without any guilt like it was normal and I feel a little social criticism on Arcand's part. It's like the film Nashville, there's not really a story, but some observations by the director. I don't compare this movie with Nashville, but I think you get the point. It's a beautifully shot realistic view into a young successful architect life