Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

p-seed-889-188469 Making movies about affairs is a tricky business. While they may be a matter of life and death to those involved they are spectacularly boring to the outside observer. They make no sense, defy all logic and seem the ultimate in selfishness, self-delusion and self-destruction. We acknowledge they exist but they are not a pretty sight. For these reasons it is difficult for an audience to become involved with the protagonists of the affair. You observe them in all their madness rather than root for them, more a technical exercise than an emotional one. So it is with this movie, it is done as well as it possibly could be but for all that we look at the events unfolding as they surely must into disaster, watch the credits roll, and walk away from it as if we had just watched a documentary. It might help if we actually knew and cared about one or both of the protagonists before it all started. It might help even more if one or both of them were likable. Kristen Scott Thomas may be a good actress but she does not "do" warm, or perhaps she has just not landed roles that show this side of here. Whatever the reason she is not a likable person here, which may well be what was intended. Although the guy is very much the secondary character in the portrayal of the relationship he does at least bring a modicum of humanity and warmth to his role. He seems to have unwittingly awakened a monster in his mate that he is doing his best to control, and he seems like a nice, uncomplicated sort of guy. He is in over his head trying to control KST and it's hard not to sympathize with him a little. The endorsement on the cover of the DVD says it is a "magnificent love story". We see these two rutting and heaving and panting but the effect is not beautiful, or sexy or passionate, quite the contrary, all you want to do is look away in embarrassment. While we might understand on a technical level that there is some sort of love involved it is something we can't understand and can't get share in so ultimately all we see is a lot of lust. It is anything but "magnificent", it has little or nothing to do with "love" and I'm not even sure it is a "story" - it is just what inevitably happens in this particular situation. OK, the shooting is a little unusual but that is so tacked on, illogical and irrelevant it is hard to know what to make of it. Aside from that, unlike other reviewers I have no problem with the "authenticity" of the situation, let's face it, love of this nature is a form of temporary insanity, and to try and analyze it terms of logic is a futile exercise.So...in summary, a serviceable, well produced depiction of what amounts to a cautionary tale involving characters that aren't particularly likable. You will probably watch to the end, you will probably not hate it, but you may not be a better, wiser or more entertained person because of it.

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?

rowed08 Partir (Leaving) is a very powerful and wonderfully crafted French film. I found it immediately interesting that within the first few minutes of the film we are thrown into a web of suspense as a rifle is shot in the middle of the night. I was enthralled by the immediate tension that was created and was on the edge of my seat for the remainder of the movie. I have always enjoyed movies that begin with the ending, which is why I found this movie to be so exciting. The film is directed by Catherine Corsini. Corsini is a French film director and screenwriter, directing 15 films since 1982. A particular film that she directed, La répétition, was entered in the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. One idea in the film that I found intriguing was the lengths a person will go to for happiness or love. A great example of this was at the end of the film when Suzanne shoots her husband with the rifle and flees from their home to be with her lover, Ivan. Suzanne is willing to give up her children and her life by murdering her husband rather than spend another minute with him. All she seems concerned about is being with Ivan and living her life happily by his side, sacrificing everything along the way. A second idea that I found captivating was the dynamics of marriage and responsibilities to the family. Suzanne seems to give up most of her responsibilities when she begins having her affair with Ivan. A prime example of this is when Suzanne and her husband's extended family come for dinner and she steps outside to answer a call from Ivan. Her husband ends up catching her talking to him and locks her in their bedroom for the remainder of dinner. This represents how little consideration she had for spending time with her family and how much more her affair with Ivan meant to her. A "movie buff" comment I would like to make is the power of music, or lack thereof, in this film. An example of this is during the intimate scenes between Suzanne and Ivan. There is no music played during these scenes which I feel brings more intimacy to the moment. A second "movie buff" topic is the use of landscape to convey beauty in the film. An example of this is when Suzanne and Ivan are exploring their potential new home in the beautiful green mountains. In comparison, when we see Suzanne with her husband they always seem to be in places very plain and devoid of beauty. We see how in love Suzanne and Ivan are throughout the film, which I find portrayed through the beauty of the landscape. In contrast, we see how plain and loveless Suzanne's marriage to her husband is through the lack of color and vibrancy in their home.

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.