Product Details

• Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Bernard Giraudeau, Hippolyte Girardot, Lio, Yvan Attal
• Directors: Diane Kurys
• Writers: Diane Kurys, Antoine Lacomblez
• Producers: Jean-Bernard Fetoux, Robert Benmussa
• Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• DVD Release Date: July 27, 1999
• Run Time: 104 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 1572525827
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,718 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Love After Love" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Isabelle Huppert stars as Lola, a novelist in her mid-30s who is involved with two men, her long-term lover, David (Bernard Giraudeau), an architect, and Tom (Hippolyte Girardot), a rock musician. David is married to the unstable Marianne (Lio), with whom he has two children, and Tom is married to Elisabeth (Laure Killing), who is unaware of his relationship with Lola, and they also have children. Lola struggles to keep her heart and her sanity intact as everyone involved in this roiling quagmire of love and need begins to seek out some kind of solid ground.Director Diane Kurys (PEPPERMINT SODA, ENTRE NOUS), who shares with her protagonist a reputation for drawing heavily on personal experience in the creation of her art, makes LOVE AFTER LOVE a daring exploration of the consequences of survivors of the 1960s and 1970s living out the values of their youth.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars middling, June 4, 2001

By 

Peter Shelley "petershelley" (Sydney, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love After Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In this film Isabelle Huppert visits the ruins of Pompeii where it is said "after love is punishment". This is apt since Isabelle’s character, Lola, has terrible luck with men. Her husband is still entangled with his former wife, and her lover is married. Both of these men have children from their non-Lola relationships and both are tied to clinging hysterical females. In comparison, Lola is calm personified, but clearly lacking the manipulative skills to keep a man. Director Diane Kurys’ 1983 Entre Nous, also with Huppert, was praised for it’s feminist treatment of the story of women with boorish husbands. This time around it appears she has taken the opposite view. Lola’s husband is given an Eve Harrington-type secretary, and we are repeatedly told how "stupid" a co-worker’s girlfriend is. And yes, you guessed it - she’s another hysteric. I can’t recall a film directed by a woman, with so many negative portrayals of women. In an attempt to break her writer’s block, novelist Lola keeps a diary from which she reads and creates scenarios, but these play as pure soap opera, and filmed in sepia, no less. The script which Kurys co-wrote also reads like a soap opera though occasionally she comes up with something. When Lola’s lover discovers his wife is having a revenge affair, he stalks her a la Taxi Driver. When Lola and he embrace, her tears are for the end of their affair, but his are for his cuckold. And there is an argument that becomes funny because of Lola’s refusal to participate. Kurys never gives Huppert the opportunities Claude Chabrol does and she is even stingy with closeups, which is a pity since her bob here is very pretty. Kurys tries to flatten Huppert into her mysogynistic universe, ogling her flesh in 2 [love] scenes, and even emphasising her shortness. The one lasting positive image is of a blissfully happy Lola, hugging her lover and caressing him Garbo-like with her chin. It recalls the way Marguerite Gautier nestles the chaise longue in Camille, though Huppert adds a kitty-cat smirk of satisfaction.