They say art is meant to make you feel (and think). If you are going to watch this movie, you will feel.. something. So, there is an art in this movie. But on the other hand, you can take a hammer and hit you fingers with it and you will definitely feel something to. Is this art? Hurting your self with an object? According to some… it is. Just take a look at so called "performances".This movie is just like that. Artsy, self indulged performance. What is wrong with it? Let me quote Robin Skynner & John Cleese (yes, that guy from: Monty Python, Fawlty Tower, A Fished Called Wanda etc.) 2nd book – FAMILIES and how to survive them:John – Interesting. Well I'm not going to try to argue the merits of emotional dependence, because I've been so completely converted to your point of view, that all I seem to observe now is how much unhappiness the idealisation of dependence brings. Just take the Great Love Stories – Romeo and Juliet, La Traviata, Anna Karenina, Carmen, Antony and Cleopatra, Aida, Doctor Zhivago, Tristan and Isolde, Brief Encounter. Mention them to people and a dreamy radiance passes across their face and they say: "Oh, they're wonderful aren't they, so romantic." Well, they are not wonderful. They are tales of almost unmitigated misery. There's not ten minutes of good, everyday happiness and fun in any of them. The lovers usually get one dollop of over-the-top ecstasy and apart from that it's wall-to-wall suffering. They get stabbed, walled up in tombs, they throw themselves and die of consumption or renounce each other in agony. They're convinced they can only find happiness choose on grounds of unavailability. So, Doctor, why do you think all this dependence and its consequent suffering is equated with true love?Robin – Well, after all, the first love we experience, for our mothers, is like that. At the beginning of our lives we are completely dependent, so we do suffer badly if mother isn't there when we need her. And though we'll naturally always need love and support, if we don't grow out of this kind of childish demand we'll go on treating our lovers in the same way, trying to make them care for us like parents and feeling threatened when they don't.John – And this kind of love makes us feel 'special', doesn't it? As babies do, with all that exclusive attention. But really healthy families obviously don't believe that suffering adds significance to their lives.Robin – No. As they're not so needy, they won't need to justify childish demands by suffering terribly when they aren't met. (Page 13-14)Now add to this psychological profile "50 shades of Grey" type of complete misunderstanding what is BDSM all about… you get: After Fall Winter.My proposal: Please, use hammer instead. It's much quicker, it will save you time for the same effect – pain with no meaning (other than faulty misuse of handy tool). And as a matter of fact, there is no blame in it. Even the greatest minds of this planet hit themselves with a hammer, from time to time. You might even get a Newtonian "Eureka!" moment while suffering :)

Mix the raw emotion and psychological disturbance of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club with a story of romance and love and this is what you get. A Romeo and Juliet for the minds who grew up reading A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest while going through their educational careers being numbed by the despair of the writing and music of Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, or Stabbing Westward, to I'm a Barbie Girl and Marilyn Manson. With unemployment and fiscal trouble running rampant and mass shootings on the television daily, this is a story of love that can speak to a generation who may never have known what the words "I love you" meant. This was truly an original film and I will be looking out for this writer in the future.

This is a love story about two broken people (Michael stated that all people are broken)trying to find repair (salvation, redemption, purpose, etc.) through love. However, the damages that Michael and Sophie bring into the relationship makes it difficult for them to develop a relationship. Michael is a masochist and Sophie is a dominatrix by profession who caters to masochistic men. You would thus think they were soul mates. However, Sophie only role plays her sadistic posture in her work and is not truly a dominatrix personally. Michael is a failure with many redeeming qualities and his masochism mollifies his failures and subsequent depression. Both enter the relationship hiding something from each other, and this serves as an invisible barrier to their love. For the first time in her life, Sophie overcomes her anxiety over intimate love and finds herself falling in love, following Michael's lead in his dependent need for her.However, Michael reveals himself as a pathetic failure who deceived her and she leaves him with disastrous consequences.The movie's ending is disappointing since the potential for developing a love relationship could have been actualized with time and proper honest communication.The movie is extremely well done in all aspects except the ending. The ending could have easily been revised in different ways to make a fulfilling story.Manuel Bonnet as Michael and Lizzie Brocheré as Sophie were both superb. For me, Brocheré's performance ranks with that of Giulietta Massina in "La Strada" as one of the best female performances.

If all of the other reviewers on this site watched the same "After Fall, Winter" that I did. All of these stars and all of these gushing reviews feel like deck-stacking on the part of the filmmaker and his friends, and this phenomenon seems to follow Eric Schaeffer wherever he goes. He is like a male Bebe Buell in that regard. This particular group of reviews reeks of this tactic; all of them rave extensively over the movie but reveal no plot points and devote most of their text to praising Mr. Schaeffer.I rented this movie because I'm a BDSM person, and on that level this picture is profoundly insulting. Without revealing any specific plot points, I will only remark that as a long-term dominatrix, I was deeply offended by the implication that one of my fellow older pros would ever, ever refer a client to a fellow practitioner with whom she felt he would not be safe, no matter how much he begged to be referred to such a person.Another thing that leads me to suspect that these reviews are ringers is that none of them specifically praise the only person who seemed to be trying to bring this often-implausible script to sincere life - the lead actress, Lizzie Brochere. The only pleasure I was able to derive from this depressing, insulting film occurred when she was on screen. I feel like she really tried to make a decent movie that would be watchable for people other than Eric Schaeffer's friends but was subverted from that end time and time again by Mr. Schaeffer's colossal overestimation of his own ability to arouse sympathy and interest.