Product Details

• Actors: Juliette Binoche, Alexis Loret, Mathieu Amalric, Carmen Maura, Jean-Pierre Lorit
• Directors: André Téchiné
• Writers: André Téchiné, Gilles Taurand, Olivier Assayas
• Producers: Alain Sarde, André Martin, Christine Gozlan
• Format: NTSC
• Language: English, French, German, Spanish
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Run Time: 124 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00003CXM4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #705,782 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Alice and Martin" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

At the age of 10, Martin is sent by his single mother (a tough, tender, joyful Carmen Maura) to live with his father, an industrialist with a wife and family of his own. Ten years later, the grown Martin (pretty, first-time actor Alexis Loret) flees his new home in a panic when his father dies, and he lives like a hermit in the hills before seeking out his brother (Mathieu Amalric) in Paris. When he meets Alice (the radiant Juliette Binoche), his brother's worldly, wary roommate, his puppy-dog obsessiveness and seductive but sincere tenderness slowly wins her over despite their age differences. But insular Martin keeps his own emotions wrapped up, even as he shoots to the top of modeling world, until his haunted past bursts out in a depression that threatens to consume him and Alice must reconnect him to his estranged family.

André Téchiné has delivered some of the most delicate character pieces in recent French cinema, most notably the coming-of-age drama Wild Reeds. Alice and Martin, authored with help from Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep), never quite comes together as smoothly as his best work; it ricochets from lovely romantic flirtations to tortured psychodrama to family melodrama while Téchiné's oblique, reserved direction observes without penetrating the heart of the drama. Loret's Martin is more enigma than character, but Amalric shows the same shaggy, understated charm he displayed in Late August, Early September and Binoche brings a sensitivity and toughness to the emotionally scuffed Alice. Her radiant presence gives the film its moments of emotional frisson a discreet, subtle power. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker

The new André Téchiné picture stars Juliette Binoche as Alice, a violin player who gives nothing away-like the movie, she is close to unreadable-and yet gives all for love. Alice is the roommate of the outgoing Benjamin (Mathieu Amalric), whose quiet, younger half-brother, Martin (Alexis Loret), arrives unannounced at their apartment. Alice and Martin fall for one another, although neither looks too happy about it. In their gracefully twisted world, love can sometimes feel as damaging as the lack of it. The central affair is more like a sleepwalk than a joyride, and both parties seem to be carrying untold burdens. Like the landscapes that Téchiné photographs with such speedy rapture, this strange and nagging work is not so much a sunny romance as a vale of secrets. In French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Needy, April 14, 2005

By 

MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alice and Martin (DVD)

Juliette Binoche has become the Florence Nightingale of French movies. The characters she plays are always intense, emotionally present and available, always concerned, always willing to make things right, transcendentally beautiful: think all the way back to "Damage" or "Blue," in which she she takes on the emotional as well as the physical mantel of her dead husband's musical works.
Ever the caretaker, Binoche as Alice once again becomes attached to someone, Martin who loves her... but needs her more. As she says in "Alice et Martin," "I do what I can." And when Martin (Alexis Loret) tells her he hates her: "I don't care...I will always be here for you."
Emotionally intense, psychologically suspect, beautiful to look at, "Alice et Martin" never fails to keep your interest.
Director Andre Techine' is cagey and talented enough to know that the intensity of Alice and Martin's relationship will start to repel us, so he breaks away from them with charming scenes of Alice alone with Martin's mother (the luminous Carmen Maura) and scenes of Martin's father and his family.
Binoche is such a powerful actress that it takes an equally strong actor (as in the case of Maura) to successfully play a scene with her without fading into the woodwork. Unfortunately, Loret, in his first film role, is not her equal by any means. Loret does disturbed and emotionally whacked just fine but most of the time his performance is vacant and empty...without emotional currency.
"Alice et Martin" has flaws but nonetheless it's obvious and many charms, particularly the varied and poignant performance of Binoche, grab and envelop you despite them.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guilt Eventually Will Eat You Alive, April 10, 2005

By 

Momoko (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alice Et Martin (Alice and Martin [Non-US Format, PAL Region 2]) (DVD)

This sad and beautiful story describes a choice of having hope in midst of chaotic life seemingly damaged. The feeling of guilt inside him gradually took power over his health to become malfunctional as a person, and until he accepted his guilt it was killing him. Even if Martin's life may not be the happiest one, he decides to live forward and proactively.

Just like a typidal French movie it shows lifestyle of Paris - struggles to survive, lots of opportunities and encounters to unknown.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not your typical Hollywood fairy tale, May 27, 2002

By 

John D. Hernandez Jr. "jdhtampa" (Tampa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alice and Martin [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A romantic love affair that is against all odds. Intense Psyhchodrama and shocking symbolism (hence do not be eating during this movie) takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride of suspense. Survival seems to be the necessity, but can one survive without love? The character Martin will try and the movie will keep you wondering.