ScoobyMint Disappointment for a huge fan!

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Uriah Piddle Yes, the acting was superb especially from Thomas who seems to be in every other movie these days. How does she do it? The movie could have failed badly had it turned the focus directly onto the psychological aspects of adultery such as guilt. Instead, it chose indirection by describing everything in terms of money with all the shame and panic and humiliation that comes from the lack of it. The shame of having to peddle your watch to strangers in order to get enough to fill up the car stands in for the shame of having abandoned your family for the sake of wild sex.Half-way through, my wife said that, were it not for the sex scenes, it would be a good flick to show to adolescents as a warning as to what can happen when you abandon your responsibilities and the film ended well in this respect with the sound of police sirens.Now to the really sad part, the reviews most of which shrunk from any kind of moral judgment. What were the Thomas character transgressions? Adultery, theft and murder. And her husband's faults? He was boring. None of the dozen or so reviews I have read were capable of saying that this movie is about a bad woman. So, if your husband is boring, you shoot him in his sleep with a deer rifle and you're a conflicted, complicated, lonely housewife. She was bored. Who could blame her?

secondtake Leaving (2009)A very dry slice of life, and a common and awful slice of life--the breakup of a seemingly okay marriage. It's a very modern, well off, pan European series of events, mostly taking place in the south of France. There is devastation, violence, sex, hurt children, hurt friends, and mostly a lot of pain between the ecstasies. And I suppose that's how it really goes down. Fair enough.But not necessarily the most engaging movie. I'm not talking about being entertained, but about being lifted, or made to rethink something serious, or maybe even be swept away in something lyrical. Not so. This is deliberately (or not) a study in realism, and yet a glossy one, with some neat ends tied up here and there. I mean, it may be a series of fairly realistic events, but this is a simplified, "nice" world. The one really solid reason to watch this is the stellar, nuanced, deeply felt performance by British actress Kristin Scott Thomas. The range of moods is amazing, and moving, if you can get absorbed otherwise.

Jonathan Carr Although this is a simple story it's a powerful illustration of an abusive relationship which leads to tragedy. We all know that many, many marriages are abusive, and financial control of women is a primary instrument for keeping them in line. Since Kristen Scott Thomas is beautiful and fragile (and she is far more attractive in French) we sympathize with her plight as she falls for a man without money and chooses to leave her husband, who is wealthy. The situation brings out the ugliness in them both, and the story proceeds to its horrible end. Hollywood would not have made this, because its not complex enough, but perhaps what the film says is that some aspects of life are unchanging. It reminds us of the feminist mantra that men actually despise women. Germaine Greer has been trying to tell people to remember this fact since the 1960s. It reminds us that power relationships are ugly when people push against them, like Rosa Parks on the bus, or a slave murdering his owner and being hanged for a 'crime'. In fact, this is a disturbing film, looking directly at territory that most entertainment glosses over.

davidgee Kristin Scott Thomas has tended to play hard-ass women who keep their emotions in check, but in LEAVING the ice-princess doesn't just melt, she gives off steam! The sex scenes between Suzanne, the bored Parisian housewife, and her beefy Spanish builder are fairly bracing; it's clearly not his intellect that she's fallen for. Swapping her sterile modern house (irony here: her dull husband's a surgeon) for a seedy suburban apartment doesn't seem to faze her, but drama - indeed, melodrama - is lurking on the horizon. The director gives most of the ending away at the beginning (echoes of Sunset Boulevard), which I thought was a mistake.Wife takes lover, tragedy ensues: it's a hoary old plot that shouldn't work but it does, thanks entirely to Scott Thomas's incandescent performance. Hopefully, she'll win awards for this.