Nonureva
Really Surprised!
Mjeteconer
Just perfect...
Bessie Smyth
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
writers_reign
Overall I think the film justifies the mixed reaction it has had here. I agree with one of the posters that if you are going to set a film in Paris and SELL it on the basis that it IS set in Paris then the least you can do is to CONVINCE us that we ARE in Paris; I think the poster in question was perfectly correct to state that we might be anywhere given that roughly 90 per cent of the action occurs in the dismal, grey eponymous boarding house. That same poster speculated on what an attractive and wealthy young American would see in Shaun Dingwall's Grunewald, I would go even farther and ask what ANY woman would see in such a colorless character let alone Julie Delpy who, against all the Laws of Reason, falls madly in love with him. Life at the Villa is hardly a million laffs so that my allusion to The Lower Depths is not that far out. On the positive side the acting is uniformly excellent but the overriding impression is of Julie Delpy's fragile Dresden Sheperdess presiding over a gallery of grotesques. Maybe you should see it once for the experience.
raraavis-2
It's a totally surreal movie that did remind me of "Delicatessen". Even the peculiar pastel colors are similar. The tale? A new maid starts working at a dilapidated boarding house - a pension - in Paris, in 1913, and she gets involved with a young German artist who lives there. Her relationship with him is the central part of the plot, but the other characters add subplots in their own strange ways. The people who live there are peculiar, the owners are peculiar, the situations are peculiar... but I got caught in it and came to enjoy the faintly claustrophobic atmosphere. Drama, touches of black humor, absurdity, love and betrayal, it's got it all. Not an absolute masterpiece but well worth seeing.
Keersmaekers
In the world of Belgian cinema, Frank Van Passel has been more than just a name for quite some years now. Both 'Manneke Pis' and 'Terug naar Oosterdonk' made an unforgettable impression and made him perhaps the most important Belgian director to walk the face of the earth. Recently, though, things grew a bit quiet around Frank Van Passel, but let there be no mistake about it: he is back. And how! A firm script by Christophe Dirickx, years of hard work by Frank Van Passel and a for a Belgian movie most extraodrinary cast (Julie Delpy, Shaun Dingwell, Hariet Walter, Jan Decleir, Dora Van der Groen and Frank Vercruysse), all these ingredients make 'Villa Des Roses' an incredible and unforgettable cinematographic experience. Though I was fairly sceptic about the mix of ingredients, the result is more than convincing. Each character receives a well-balanced attention. 'Villa Des Roses' is a must-see and I hope that audiences abroad as well as distributors worldwide will acknowledge, through this sutble masterpiece, that Belgium is more than capable of producing great cinema.
c_declercq
In the great line of both Belgian cinema as well as European cinema, Frank Van Passel keeps up with the likes of Kümel and Delvaux on the one hand and maybe even the Tavianni brothers and Kieslowski on the other hand. In time, 'Villa des Roses', will prove a corner-stone experience of Belgian cinematographic capabilities, and this along with the line of traditional great names of the past (mentioned above), names that also shaped European cinema into what it is now, or better into what it should be: rich quality. One can only hope that this period of time will be a very short one, for audiences abroad shouldn't be deprived of this work of art.
