Henri Balzac's tale of a general and a Duchess who fall in love but mostly never do anything other than pine for each other.
Showing on IFC in Theaters I made it through about 40 minutes of this before I turned it off. Beautiful to look at this slow and meandering tale struck me as the sort of "art" film of my youth that was held up as the reason more people don't like "art" films. It's deep and brooding and very silly. Its more the type of thing you make fun of then enjoy.
The film begins at the end when the soldier visits a cloistered nunnery and sees the Duchess one more time. It struck me as such an ending that nothing needed to follow it, but the movie cranks on from there flashing back five years to when it all started. I'm sure that had I not read the reviews that gave away little plot points I might have hung in there but the thought of being stuck for two and a half hours with such silly people was too much to bear.
Clearly I didn't like it
Showing on IFC in Theaters I made it through about 40 minutes of this before I turned it off. Beautiful to look at this slow and meandering tale struck me as the sort of "art" film of my youth that was held up as the reason more people don't like "art" films. It's deep and brooding and very silly. Its more the type of thing you make fun of then enjoy.
The film begins at the end when the soldier visits a cloistered nunnery and sees the Duchess one more time. It struck me as such an ending that nothing needed to follow it, but the movie cranks on from there flashing back five years to when it all started. I'm sure that had I not read the reviews that gave away little plot points I might have hung in there but the thought of being stuck for two and a half hours with such silly people was too much to bear.
Clearly I didn't like it