A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was starring Léa Seydoux, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, since I didn’t know what this movie was about before watching it, I was wondering what they were trying to achieve here for a while. Well, it turned out to be basically a slice-of-life feature focusing on an average woman facing the ending of a relationship and the start of a new one pretty much at the same time. I have to admit that I’m not really familiar with Mia Hansen-Løve’s work (I’m definitely eager to watch her other movies now) but she did a great job here delivering such complex and fully fledged characters. Eventually, I don’t think I have ever seen an extra-marital affair being depicted with so much compassion. Above all, Léa Seydoux was once again so spellbinding to behold here. Indeed, even though she was still super charismatic, they toned down all the glamor and glitter, she really disappeared in this character and there was something so relatable about this woman. It was also intriguing that she never mentioned her deceased husband since he passed away only 5 years before but I think it was also refreshing. Indeed, even if it was definitely a tragic event, it didn’t have to define who she would be for the rest of her life. Concerning her relationship with her father, to be honest, I had some mixed feelings. I’m not blaming Seydoux, she played so well the stress and anguish experienced by her character and Pascal Greggory was so good here, he might have given his best performance, no less than that. The issue was that we didn’t see them before, how they relationship used to be, so what was left was the main character basically mourning her father while he was actually still alive (at least, physically) which was, for some reason, not really rewarding to me. At the end of the day, they mostly focused on the process of finding the right place for him to stay (basically, to wait the end of his life) which felt more clinical than really emotional. I think the fact that I never really fully engaged myself with this aspect of the movie might have had more to do with the cold distant relationship I have with my own parents then with the way this movie handled this topic though. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was missing something to be truly remarkable, it was still a really solid realistic drama and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.