Not having read de Beauvoir's book (on which this film is based) my complaints may be unjust to one or the other.
The pace is uneven, as though chunks of the story were skipped to cut to the milestones. Other films manage to do the same without appearing choppy as this does. Barely has Hélène (Jodie Foster) met Jean (Michael Ontkean) and she is talking about marriage. When he discovers she is pregnant, suddenly the idealistic Jean declares his love for her despite Hélène's transparently manipulative modus.
The overall story is compelling, considering the source this is perhaps unsurprising, and the film tries to do some justice to it. The acting is passable; Ontkean did better than I expected him to do but Jodie did worse than she normally does: this is one of several films she made in her wilderness years of self-doubt, and it shows.
I suspect the unevenness of pace was because the screenplay was a poorly balanced abbreviation of the book.
Some criticisms. Post-production dubs of outdoor scenes sound like they were recorded in a room - obviously they were but didn't need to sound like that - and the audiovisual sync - or lack of it - betrays which segments of the soundtrack these are.
The entire dialogue should have been in French and, since there's no French equivalent (AFAIK), we would have been spared "geddowdahere" from Jodie who speaks near-perfect accent-less French.
The story has great potential, after all it's from a critically acclaimed book, but was ultimately let down by the direction.
The worst moment came, for me, at the end of the film when Jean embraces Hélène thereby moving the bullet in her lung to somewhere even less convivial. Besides being idiocy, it made me want to quietly lead Jean into another room and beat him unconscious.
The pace is uneven, as though chunks of the story were skipped to cut to the milestones. Other films manage to do the same without appearing choppy as this does. Barely has Hélène (Jodie Foster) met Jean (Michael Ontkean) and she is talking about marriage. When he discovers she is pregnant, suddenly the idealistic Jean declares his love for her despite Hélène's transparently manipulative modus.
The overall story is compelling, considering the source this is perhaps unsurprising, and the film tries to do some justice to it. The acting is passable; Ontkean did better than I expected him to do but Jodie did worse than she normally does: this is one of several films she made in her wilderness years of self-doubt, and it shows.
I suspect the unevenness of pace was because the screenplay was a poorly balanced abbreviation of the book.
Some criticisms. Post-production dubs of outdoor scenes sound like they were recorded in a room - obviously they were but didn't need to sound like that - and the audiovisual sync - or lack of it - betrays which segments of the soundtrack these are.
The entire dialogue should have been in French and, since there's no French equivalent (AFAIK), we would have been spared "geddowdahere" from Jodie who speaks near-perfect accent-less French.
The story has great potential, after all it's from a critically acclaimed book, but was ultimately let down by the direction.
The worst moment came, for me, at the end of the film when Jean embraces Hélène thereby moving the bullet in her lung to somewhere even less convivial. Besides being idiocy, it made me want to quietly lead Jean into another room and beat him unconscious.