BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Junker-2 I rather enjoyed the first 45 minutes of "Beloved." Ludivine Sagnier, one of my favorite actresses, plays a 1960s French woman who is confused by love. I was still with the story as the years passed and Sagnier matures into Catherine Deneuve, in a nifty bit of casting. However as the story shifts to that of daughter Vera, it all becomes a bit too morose for me. Vera for some reason becomes obsessed with a man who cannot love her back. It's hard for us to see any reason for this obsession. It simply appears the young woman is eager to destroy her life.There are very strong echoes here of the Truffaut film "The Story of Adele H." Truffaut, however, was well aware he was filming the story of a woman's descent into madness and hell. In "Beloved," director Christophe Honoré takes a similar story but shoots it in a very different light. He seems to think there is something so very romantic about desperately loving someone who cannot possibly love you back.Honoré throws in everything but the kitchen sink here, covering topics from Aids to 9/11. But, at around 2 hours and 20 minutes, it's all too much for such a morose topic. I probably should have turned it off after those first 45 minutes.

cmi-573-437033 The problem with this film is Christophe Honoré. A 2 and ½ hour film about self-indulgent people explaining why they are unhappy at being self-indulgent. It could have been done one hour shorter. The half musical score is a feeble attempt to be the the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Trying to be French new wave cool instead of being good. I'm convinced Christophe would have tried to make a musical out of Cloud Atlas. I love the cast but after 2 and ½ hours I was wishing they would take an overdose and end my suffering and theirs. Catherine Deneuve, always beautiful and her daughter in film and real life, Chiara Mastroianni, convincing as a seductress, but they were the only high points in the film for me. I rate this film a good sleep aide..

tim hilton Way way way too long. The nearly three hour run-time is longer than all the parking meters in the area of the theater, so i even risked a parking ticket to see the end of this flick! Lots of actors from a previous Honore musical: "Love Songs" (which ran a respectable 100 minutes). Sagnier gets the movie off the ground and then Deneuve sinks it. Mastroianni also greatly helps toward its floundering. I suppose most blame should be heaped on either the director or producers for allowing this thing to go to distribution in its present state. There might be a decent musical in there somewhere. Ludivine Sagnier is one of the many attractive gems of European Leading Ladies of the cinema. She and Isabelle Huppert are my favorite French Actresses nowadays. It's always tricky to cross generational lines and use different actors for the same character in different stages in life. Even the most forgiving viewer might find himself at odds reconciling the tall handsome young "Jaromil" with his older version, regardless of how well and charming the part was played. If you liked "Love Songs" then you will feel at home with the Alex Beaupain score.

writers_reign It takes a lot to get me to pay good money to see one of Cristope Honore's wet dreams and it'll take even more after this bad joke. The selling point such as it was took the shape of a chance to see Catherine Deneuve playing opposite her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni, as they did a couple of years ago in A Christmas Tale. I really should have known better, after all Honore did little for Isabel Huppert's career when he featured her in Ma Mere albeit Huppert has a penchant, unlike Deneuve, for appearing in sleaze and is such a great actress she is able to live it down. For Deneuve it must have felt like a sentimental journey of sorts given that her breakthrough role came in The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg where one hundred per cent of the dialogue was sung. Here it's something like seventy per cent and in forty eight years the lyrics here are just as banal as Demy provided for Umbrellas but the big difference is 1) Demy had the benefit of Michele Legrand's melodic gifts and was himself a gifted director whilst Honore is lumbered with a tone-deaf composer and couldn't direct a sex-starved sailor to a hooker in Hamburg. One to forget.