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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A is with B.C is with D.A goes with C and B goes with D...and we have a mess!!!!, May 1, 2007
Sometimes anymore than two can upset the delicate balance.When Carlotta and Edouard meet again after a twenty year absence,their love is rekindled,they marry and retire to his inherited Tuscan villa for at least one year of wedded bliss.Edouard,feeling the need to invite his old chum Otto to help with further land development on the estate does so and,unfortunately the rest of the film is doomed to play out what Carlotta's face expresses....the inevitable "I don't think this is such a good idea,Edouard.Three is a crowd!!!".Carlotta invites her step daughter,Otelia, and four people at the Tuscan retreat seems to right the balance again.The rest of the story is so silly that I will not waste yours or my time.
I will basically conclude here with these few thoughts: If this had not been an adaptation of a Goethe novel,a period piece of the 1800's, lavishly shot in breathtaking Tuscany, and starring Isabelle Huppert, I would have NEVER completed this positively insufferable movie.It is that bad! I would have loved to be more generous and genial in my remarks, but this truly was mind-numbingly horrible. Spoken in very rapid Italian (one fights to keep up with the whirlingly fast and long yellow subtitles!) with positively ridiculous closeup (no less) voiceovers for the French Huppert,the acting is as wooden as a nutcracker in a ballet (actually a nutcracker would have been more interesting!) Huppert, who has seen moments of brilliance on screen, follows the same line of tiresome icyness as she portrayed in MADAME BOVARY.The rest of the actors are completely forgettable.
Apart from the cinematography, this film would have been 0 stars.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
don't vote for this one, November 5, 2000
This 1996 Italian-French co-production by the Taviani brothers is like an imported box of eaten chocolates - pretty but empty. Based on a novel by Goethe, the story reads like a folk tale with a weak ending. The title refers to a love quartet in a Tuscan villa where an aristocratic married couple become involved with the husband's best friend and the wife's goddaughter, and their affections are traded. The Taviani's gives us a laboured chalk-board explaination of this equation, but also a sex scene with imagined interchangeable partners. Goethe gets all mystical in having the product of the night born by the wife, but with features of the best friend and goddaughter. The child however gets an unintentional laugh since it's thick red hair makes it resemble Chucky from the Child Play series. The film is hampered by a narration by Giancarlo Giannini and dubbing of the actors, since it appears only Fabrizio Bentivoglio as the best friend is speaking Italian, and the others French. In spite of my disappointment over the dubbing of Huppert in particular, and her being saddled with an unflattering black wig, she manages to invest her wife with humour and pathos. Ironically the dubbing of Jean-Hugues Anglade as the husband and the Taviani's direction make him less mannered than usual, though his scenes of physical injury recall his indulgent death scene in Queen Margo. The opening image of a drowned statue of Venus made me think this would be a story of female suffering, and though this image is never given any resonance, there is a disproportionate guilt about the situation as Huppert feels guilty and Anglade does not. We may already think that any man who is prepared to give up Isabelle Huppert is a fool but when he also displays no grief over the death of a family member, all empathy goes out the window. The Taviani's style saves this from being a total failure. They provide some nice editing dissolves, a dance on weak wooden boards of a bridge, and a shocking act of refusal to eat. The final image of a child servant crying over a loss like an animal in the wilderness might have worked better if the story had come together in a more satisfying way, and I could have done without the running gag of the same servant carrying luggage according to her employer's whim.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasant film to watch..., June 25, 2000
By A Customer
Made by the Taviani brothers, "Elective affinities" is well..., not exactly up to expectation. The film is simple and precise, which I find quite pleasant. It is based on a novel by Goethe, and the story shows how human lives are unable to match mathematical formulas.(Quite frankly, I find it curious matching something as illogical as emotions with something rational.) As the plot goes... A woman engages her lover and then, wed. They settle in on his estate and then the husband's friend arrives for a visit, at almost the same time the women's young daughter appears. Hmm... wonder what's going to happen?However... some scenes tend to be routine though, which I didn't particularly like. But, overall... an agreeable film to watch... 3 stars.
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