VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

SnoopyStyle It's 1933 Cambridge University, England. One rainy night, wild dilettante Gilda Bessé (Charlize Theron) sneaks into sincere student Guy Malyon (Stuart Townsend)'s room. She stays and they start dating. As a girl, she visited a fortune teller who could only see her 34th year. After her mother's death, she leaves England to travel the world. Guy finally catches up to her in Paris. His girlfriend surrenders and leaves. Gilda is living with mysterious beauty Mia (Penélope Cruz). They form a threesome. Idealistic Guy and Spanish Mia go to fight the fascists in Spain despite Gilda's objection. Mia is killed and Guy returns to Paris to an unforgiving Gilda. During WWII, Guy becomes a British spy while Gilda becomes the mistress to a Nazi officer.Charlize Theron is magnetic. Stuart Townsend is not innocent enough to be Guy. To me, he needs to play up his character's sincere idealism. I imagine a nerd with glasses with his face in a book. Stuart always has a twinkle and the angry pout of a male model. I guess it was impossible to split the real-life couple apart at that time. Penélope Cruz could play with more heat. Her English may not be good enough at the time but she could let them have it with her Spanish heat. She absolutely has it in reserve but she rarely uses it in this movie. As for the story itself, it wants to be a sprawling romantic war epic. It's long enough but it could never be grand enough. It takes on this vast pulpy romance-novel-style writing but only Theron truly comes out on top. She is always bigger than the movie.

merylmatt When I say pretty I don't mean just the actors Charlize (Gilda)Penelope Cruz and Stuart Townsend(Guy). Very nice epic/period piece that starts off post World War 1 and ends in 1945. The costumes, cars, homes, backdrops are gorgeous.I thought the movie was too long. After about 45 minutes, you get the idea that the main character is a spoiled rich hedonist who wants to escape reality. She was a feminist before there were such things.**Spoilerer** You also catch on quickly that everyone loves Gilda, but she is incapable of returning love or loyalty. Or is she? Can there be last minute redemption? In the movies, sure. My biggest problem with this flick is that it has been done before - see the Winds of War for example amongst others. If you've never seen a period piece of the 1930's, this may wow you.

Dane (dane11) I'll keep this simple -- this movie could have been great, but it wanted to be too much. It wanted to be epic, it wanted to be about friends and it wanted to be an anti-war movie and on top of that, it wanted to be about WWII and the underground work. I wanted to like this movie and while it's not impossible to watch, it is slow and plodding some times. This is a movie that really could have hit the audience hard, but it just kind of laid there instead.We go through a long, long development of the relationship between the two main characters Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend. This could have been story enough, but no, we have to follow them over a 10 or 15 year period and go all the way through WWII. Early on, we are introduced to Penelope Cruz who is a good friend to Theron's character. And from this we kind of slip into a pseudo-three-way that never fully develops. Then there is the Spanish Civil War that Cruz's character feels she must partake in as well as Townsend. Again, this could have been an interesting story all on its own. Finally, we get into WWII and it drags on and on and I started to lose interest in the characters and the story. It's all just too much of a BIG story and, at the same time, not enough of a story to really hold our interest. The actors were okay, though sometimes I felt like Theron was just reading her lines. Townsend, for the most part fits the role, but other times he comes across as too modern for the time period. There are a few twists and turns here that keep the viewer interested, but overall, its not as good as it could have been. A shorter version, about one of the many story lines could make this a really, really good film.

leplatypus This movie is a good illustration of a passionate romance based only on intimacy. No matter whom the lovers are deep inside, their pleasure is in the flesh, whatever it is with women or men. So, when the mind and feelings come, they lose their bond and they can leave each other.With the years passing, this truth gets less powerful but in the tragic era of World War Two, every second can be decisive.I found the cast wonderful: I just like Penelope Cruz's accent and it's an evidence that Charlize Theron is a damned good actress! The scope of this love story is appealing between stern England, cool Paris and wounded Spain! As full of it, a very good surprise! (the only flaw: the Parisian neighborhood looks really like a movie set, and I don't say this just because I live in Paris!)