An average movie

Even though Hilary Swank managed to snatch 2 oscars which she both deserved, I'm afraid she has never done anything else really impressive. With this flick which she produced, it seemed that she picked up a better project, a high-profile biographical drama but it was still not really a success, I'm afraid. In fact, Swank shouldn't be blamed though as she gave a pretty good performance. Furthermore, the whole thing looked pretty good and it gave a good feeling of the time period. Still, it was not really satisfying though. I don't know, but when Mira Nair makes movies about Indian people or Indian immigrants ('Salaam Bombay!', 'Monsoon Wedding', 'The namesake'), the end result is always quite amazing but when she deals with another culture ('Vanity Fair' and this movie), the end result is usually rather disappointing. In this case, the main character was actually pretty fascinating but the whole thing was still rather bland. For example, there was something about the dialogues which were sometimes rather fluffy and some scenes which didn't work very well. The best example was the scene with the plane race when her husband tried to force an opponent to let her win. As a result, they made him look like a bad guy but the whole thing wasn't developed at all during the rest of the movie. What was the point of this scene then? It was probably supposed to tell us something about Georges Putmanbut since it didn't come again at all, it was rather pointless. Still, it remains a well made drama and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10