inglis-5

I have to say that I was very disappointed by this movie - the trailer seemed to me to indicate that the Ludivine Sagnier would be making a choice between the two male characters, when in fact there really is no choice - on the one hand a passionate and intelligent man whom she loves (Berléand), and on the other a more than slightly creepy spoiled rich kid whom she doesn't (Magimel). François Berléand's performance was excellent, but some of the other acting was a little one-dimensional, most notably Benoît Magimel's, although to be fair to him he was not helped by the script. His acting and the storyline combined to create a character who was so blatantly unstable that it was somewhat unbelievable that Sagnier would agree to marry him, except perhaps as some kind of slow self-destructive descent, which I suppose was perhaps what was intended.

I came out of this movie feeling as if I knew Marjane Satrapi. The way in which the story is told is fantastic - it really is as if you're reading her journal. As she grows up from being a young girl to an adult, at each age the story is told with a corresponding maturity, and highlighting things which seem like very personal memories. As a young girl, the stories she is told are very black and white, and as she gets older the complexity increases, which is exactly what you would expect. Although there is lots of political activity, she makes fun of herself and highlights her own shortcomings as much as she highlights the repressive elements in her homeland. By telling of her own experiences it really is extremely easy to see how so much of it is common to a whole generation of Iranians. Her love of her family and her country came across very strongly, and you really felt as if she had laid herself bare. A moving and entertaining movie as much as it is educational about post-1979 Iran.

If you like French films with lingering shots of a tree, where you're not sure why you're being shown a particular scene, where you're not really all that drawn to any of the characters, and you spend the entire film trying to work out whether you will ever be shown any connection between two separate groups of characters, then this is the film for you.

I was looking at my watch after fifteen minutes, just to check how long it had run without really showing anything at all. I'm afraid I like a bit more of a storyline than this, and less open questions left to the imagination of the viewer. I was thinking simply "Why?" after five minutes, and frankly the question was never answered. What was the director trying to show? I have absolutely no idea. Very good performance by Florence Loiret, though - I hope we soon see her again in something more worth watching.

Well, easily the worst film I've seen this year, but then I suppose it's only March. Not at all sure what they were trying to do with this - given that it's the story of a Barbara Cartland style writer of romantic novels, perhaps they felt compelled to address it in the same overly melodramatic style. Frankly for about two hours I was fairly convinced that it must have been a dream sequence. I can't fault the performances, but the script was just so pedestrian they didn't have anywhere to go. The main character is imaginative to the extent that it actually becomes difficult to determine what she really believes, when she is consciously imagining and when she is simply deluded. It's never really resolved what the male lead's true feelings for her are, and the other characters are merely one-dimensional support.

Eminently missable.

I had not read any reviews or seen a trailer before watching the movie, so I was seeing it with an open mind. I suppose my overall impression was that it was an interesting concept, and it certainly held my interest throughout, but there were certain annoying details which grated a little:

• First of all, the main character is supposedly from an Irish working class background, but speaks with an English upper-class accent, and it is never explained how this came about.

• Although he's supposedly charming, you just don't see enough of him actually being charming to make it at all credible that his albeit naive wife doesn't realize he's having an affair.

• He works in a company closely connected with his father-in-law yet somehow manages to get away with using his work as a series of excuses for his absence, despite having a secretary and a driver who must surely have realized he was up to something. Perhaps he was charming or bribing them but again we never see this explanation.

• His mistress somehow fails to spot that he's using every cliché in the "man not really intending to leave his wife for his mistress" handbook.

• The scene where the two policemen discuss their thoughts on the crime seemed incredibly unrealistic - Woody Allen could have done with watching some of the numerous cop shows on British TV to make this dialog less clunky. Overall, it's worth seeing, but I can't help thinking it could have been a whole lot better without much effort.