For some reason, Michael Caine was chosen to play an American old man living in France. He is devastated by the death of his wife and can't cope with it. He contemplates suicide when he meets an interesting and very young French girl who breathes some life in his routine driven drab excuse for an existence. He tries to commit suicide and fails, making his son and daughter to come visiting. The French girl wants to fix everyone's problems, including her daddy and family issues.
Up to this point, the actors were well fleshed out, the acting good and the mood, even if boring sometimes, was interesting, feeling like something one might learn from. But towards the end Caine's character becomes more and more erratic. Far from a lovable old man and a great father, the script is trying to force him to become one with the other characters inexplicably making huge efforts to fix him. The ending is inexplicable as well, mostly because after all that effort, it seems really wasteful.
Clémence Poésy is very cute, even Harry Potter thought so, and Michael Caine remains a good actor, even if he didn't seem at all the right choice for this role. And I believe this is the part where the movie fails completely: the casting. Caine as an American, with his clearly British accent and his demeanor, I am sad to say, that of an angry bully, not a sad old man as the role demanded, was a horrible choice. I can applaud Justin Kirk trying to not play a funny guy anymore, but you do that in a movie where everybody else is well cast. As such, he was also a weird choice. And Gillian Anderson playing very well her role, I think it was actually right for her, but her character has a few scenes and then goes away.
Bottom line: the ending and the casting make this film a failure, in my mind. Besides a few well acted emotional scenes that brought tears to my eyes and some others that seemed like they are going to teach me something about human nature, it turned out to be a bore. Also, the script seemed written somewhere in the past. No one used a cell phone? Really?!
Up to this point, the actors were well fleshed out, the acting good and the mood, even if boring sometimes, was interesting, feeling like something one might learn from. But towards the end Caine's character becomes more and more erratic. Far from a lovable old man and a great father, the script is trying to force him to become one with the other characters inexplicably making huge efforts to fix him. The ending is inexplicable as well, mostly because after all that effort, it seems really wasteful.
Clémence Poésy is very cute, even Harry Potter thought so, and Michael Caine remains a good actor, even if he didn't seem at all the right choice for this role. And I believe this is the part where the movie fails completely: the casting. Caine as an American, with his clearly British accent and his demeanor, I am sad to say, that of an angry bully, not a sad old man as the role demanded, was a horrible choice. I can applaud Justin Kirk trying to not play a funny guy anymore, but you do that in a movie where everybody else is well cast. As such, he was also a weird choice. And Gillian Anderson playing very well her role, I think it was actually right for her, but her character has a few scenes and then goes away.
Bottom line: the ending and the casting make this film a failure, in my mind. Besides a few well acted emotional scenes that brought tears to my eyes and some others that seemed like they are going to teach me something about human nature, it turned out to be a bore. Also, the script seemed written somewhere in the past. No one used a cell phone? Really?!