An average movie

Since this movie had a solid reputation and since it was involving a strong cast and a very good director, I was really eager to check it out and I had some rather high expectations. Well, even though it was at the time a critical and commercial success, to be honest, I was actually surprised by how half-baked the whole thing turned out to be. I mean, the cast was really strong and this story definitely had some potential but it was just so damned murky, it just never really worked for me. First of all, I never had a clear sense about when the action was exactly taking place and I wasn't helped by some really useless and annoying back-and-forth jumps in time. On top of that, Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave looked exactly the same when they were supposedly teenagers and middle-aged women. Another issue was that the whole thing was supposed to be about this great friendship involving these 2 fascinating women but it was never really clear how they got acquainted with each other and, even worse, why they were so fond of each other. Indeed, during the really half-baked flashbacks, they gave some fairly meaningless scenes instead of showing why they became such great friends and they should have spent more time on this subject instead of showing Jane Fonda's character struggling to write some play. Anyway, to conclude, even though it turned out to be rather disappointing, I still think it is worth a look but there is no doubt that it could have been so much better.

6/10