Reviews

This movie does a good job of demystifying poets and poetry, and conveying the temptation and wastefulness of drug addiction. Ultimately, though, it's an unnecessarily complicated film with a drifting moral center and a real lack of focus (some will attribute this to its desire to recreate the opium mindset, but that's a cop-out). The splintered sympathies and victimized viewpoints make it hard to care about any of the characters. A waste of solid acting.

I'd never heard of this movie, but I took a chance on it because I usually like these actors. It's a powerful film. It has a hushed, natural beauty and feels like an American Eric Rohmer movie. It ends both happily and sadly--like life. I can't think of many other films that speak so convincingly of the heart's many ambiguities