For years, I've heard glowing praise of this movie....now that I've seen it, I feel the praise is largely undeserved. The movie gets off to a bad start: It's unclear (at least from the subtitled version I saw) where the heck the characters are. It's obviously Europe and some kind of World War II era camp, but that's all I could glean....And in the early scenes with Miou Miou, where her first husband gets shot, it wasn't clear who was doing the shooting and/or why. According to the description on this site, it was the "resistance," whatever that means....(to be fair: perhaps most Europeans in 1983 understood the history without needing reference books, but this U.S. home video viewer in 2002 would have appreciated a bit more historical context)As for the rest of the film....Slow, slow, slow. And with a lot of extraneous elements that never seemed to go anywhere. Frankly, I was hoping for more romance between the two women, which you never really see. You just get Isabelle Huppert's husband being angry all the time. And for the record, I didn't like the way the Miou-Miou character kept insulting her young son. None of these characters were particularly likeable, not even Isabelle Huppert. The ugliness of the characters detracted from my enjoyment of this, too.I suppose this was considered really "avant garde" or something, in terms of subject matter, back in 1983, when it was released. But today it just falls really flat. A disappointment.

This is a very moving film. I think I found it more sad than some of the other reviewers. It's really about the decline of a marriage through the incompatibility of the couple.The incompatibility is brought home to the woman by her class, education, style, grace and education. (The sophisticated one, played by Miou Miou is just extraordinary acting). In essence, the sophisticated woman causes the central woman (played by Isabelle Huppert) to realize that her husband is a dolt, and that they share far more than she and her husband. The wonderful thing about the movie is that though the husband is a boob, insensitive and sometimes prone to violent anger, there is no doubt that he slaves for his family, is very humble, and deeply loves his wife and his two daughters - no question about it.We get to see his pain as his wife falls out of love for him, his sometimes violent jealousy of the woman who has made his wife see him differently, and his heartbreak. It's quite profound. Those who say it all ends happily were watching another movie!I loved the periods, the costumes, the settings - from Paris on Liberation Day through the 1940s and 1950s. Although it's the daughter's story, we see much of how the couple earlier met, married and began their married life. You will love it - it's more fast-paced than many French movies, and wrenching.

The sweetest thing about this film is the portrayal from a daughter's view of her parents' struggles with who they are and their relationships with each other. The ending dedication of the film is quite poignant. This film is a reminder of the ways our lives are thrown together and how that intertwines with the choices we make. This is a bittersweet love story on more than one dimension.

This is a wonderful film, the story of two women whose lives gradually become entwined that each can fully bloom. The story of their meeting their husbands, becoming disillusioned with them and then discovering each other is a lovely story. There are problems with the sub-titles in the DVD, so if you were to rely wholly on what you read, the film would not work as well. Overall I enjoyed this film very much. A lovely story of discovery and awakening, with much left to the viewer's imagination, but all the details add to the whole.