Oscar nominee Kristin Scott Thomas (I ve Loved You So Long, Four Weddings and a Funeral) delivers another acclaimed performance in the passionate drama Leaving. When stay-at-home mom Suzanne wants to return to work, her husband agrees to remodel a garage to serve as her office. Ivan, a sexy Spanish builder, enters their lives and changes them in ways no one could have expected.
Suzanne and Ivan are irresistibly drawn together by an erotic passion that threatens to destroy her marriage, her family and everything she holds dear. Her husband will stop at nothing to destroy her first. In this thrilling romance, everyone pays a price for happiness.Kristin Scott Thomas has transformed from the ice queen of British cinema to a woman of torrid passions in French films--and
Leaving may be the most torrid yet. Suzanne (Thomas) leads a pleasant but stale upper midd! le-class life, with two teenage children (demanding and unappreciative, as all teenagers are) and a slightly pushy husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal,
My Wife Is an Actress). She has a fling with a Spanish handyman named Ivan (Sergi López,
Pan's Labyrinth) that, to her surprise, turns into an overwhelming passion. She can't bear to be without Ivan and decides to leave Samuel… a decision that slowly disintegrates her life. The strength of
Leaving lies not in the plot, which holds no radical surprises, but in the vitality of Thomas's performance (particularly striking is a scene in which Suzanne, playfully bantering with Ivan, suddenly discovers she's in deeper emotional waters than she knew) and the cool eye writer-director Catherine Corsini casts over the events. The movie lures you into sympathy with Suzanne, yet there's always something a little unnerving about her, the sense that her mad love might have more madness than love. Thomas's career in France (! including
Tell No One and
I've Loved You So Long! ) has gi ven this superb actress a new life.
--Bret FetzerJuliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas, Golden Globe® Nominee for
I've Loved You So Long, Oscar® nominee for
The English Patient) is a frail, haunted woman, an ex-doctor who's a shell of her former self. Having served 15 years in prison for an unspeakable crime, she's back on the "outside." With nowhere else to go, she comes to live with her loving but estranged sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein). Together the sisters embark on a painful but redemptive journey back from life's darkest edge in this gripping drama of struggle and salvation.Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant as Juliette, freed from prison after serving 15 years. Enigmatic, reserved, yet ready to re-enter life cautiously, Juliette moves in with her younger sister, Lea (Elsa Zylberstein), a literature professor, and the latter's husband Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), who worries about allowing Juliette into a home with two young children (related t! o the reason she was convicted in the first place). Also in the house is Juliette and Lea's father (Jean-Claude Arnaud), mute from illness. Writer-director Philippe Claudel slowly reveals details about the nature of Juliette's crime as she takes a job in a hospital records department and is wooed by a colleague. Other forces in Juliette's life--people asking questions, a visit to her dementia-suffering mother, tensions between her and Lea--slowly tease out the mystery behind her actions and takes viewers to a conclusion that adds an element of surprise but ties things up too tidily. Claudel cultivates an aura of naturalism and no-frills storytelling that allows dramatic developments and revelations to unfold easily. The film borders a bit on soap opera, but the grace and intelligence of Thomas' performance, offset by Zylberstein's more emotional work, is never less than compelling.
--Tom Keogh
Stills from I've Loved You S! o Long (click for larger image)
Based on Harlan Coben s Internation! al best selling novel, Tell No One tells the story of pediatrician Alexandre Beck who still grieves the murder of his beloved wife, Margot, eight years earlier. When two bodies are uncovered near where Margot's body was found, the police reopen the case and Alex becomes a suspect again. The mystery deepens when Alex receives an anonymous e-mail with a link to a video clip that seems to suggest Margot is somehow still alive and a message to Tell No One .
One of the Best Reviewed Films of the Year! (Rotten Tomatoes - 96% among top critics)
2008 Top 10 List Selections:
-Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
-New York Times Stephen Holden
-Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turran
-USA Today - Susan Wloszczyna
-Metacritic.com #1 - Marc Boyle
-Plus over 10 others (Washington Post, Oregonian, Newark Star Ledger, Seattle Times, Austin Chronicle, etc.)
Bonus Features:
Deleted Scenes
Outtakes
English Language Track
English SubtitlesBa! sed on the book by American author Harvey Coben, this French s! uspense thriller is one of those exhilarating word-of-mouth gems one can't to tell everyone about. Francois Cluzet stars as Alex, a pediatrician whose beloved wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) was shockingly murdered eight years before. As the anniversary of her death approaches, Alex begins to receive cryptic emails and a video that seems to suggest that she is alive. The discovery of two long-buried bodies at the crime scene turn Alex into some kind of Hitchcockian Everyman, implicated in a crime he could not possibly have committed. But when he makes a mad dash from the police who visit him at his office, he seems to have signed his own confession. This synopsis doesn't even begin to hint at the genuinely exciting and surprising twists, turns, and revelations that await Alex in this Chinese box of a mystery. Brilliantly acted by an ensemble that includes Kristin Scott Thomas and French movie icon Jean Rochefort (
Pardon Mon Affaire),
Tell No One invites repeat viewing! s, the better to appreciate the intricacies of its plotting and construction. And if you think you have it figured out, there's this from one character who tells Alex at a climactic point, "Wait, there's more."
--Donald Liebenson
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