I see a movie to be entertained, not to watch someone I don't care about screw up their life by making bad decisions and by alienating everyone in their lives, their family and friends. I love character driven movies, but give me characters that I care about and who are care-able about, not obnoxious, narcissistic people who I wouldn't want to be friends with in real life. The main character Laura, it too lethargic, indecisive, and uncertain. She seems mired in life and only by breaking free will she blossom, however twice she picks the wrong man to have an affair with, and the man she's had a baby with she's fallen out of love with. This is too depressing. After viewing this film, I'm sorry to say, I felt like I'd wasted two hours of my life. I'm sorry to give a bad review, but I felt like I should warn others who feel like I do. One more thing... is there any reason the characters can't be in focus at all times? Don't they make autofocus cameras in Hollywood?

"Forty Shades of Blue" features Rip Torn as an acerbic, hard-drinking music producer in Memphis who, though greatly beloved by his fans and the people in the industry, is viewed somewhat differently by those who know him best. Despite his advanced age, he has a gorgeous live-in girlfriend, Laura (Dina Korzun), whom he met while on a business trip to Russia and, even though they seem to be reasonably devoted to one another and their relationship, Laura is becoming increasing morose as a result of his constant philandering. When Alan's married son, Michael (Darren E. Burrows) - who has reasons of his own for resenting the man - comes from California for a visit, he and Laura enter into a secret love affair that forces her to finally question her commitment to Alan and to perhaps cut the chords - both obligatory and emotional - that bind her to him.Although the script does an effective job capturing the tensions simmering just beneath the surface of the story, the plot itself seems too conventional and too underdeveloped to engage the viewer completely. Still the characters are complex enough and the performances sufficiently layered to at least hold our interest throughout. Torn is particularly good at creating a character whose amiability and likability on the surface mask a callousness and mean-spiritedness below.This is a subtle, if not exactly gripping, study of the compromises we make - and the choices we come to regret - in our effort to avoid loneliness and to find meaning and happiness in life.

Ira Sachs, the first time director who made this film, deserves some kind of an award.He's managed to bring together a very diverse story and cast, and have it be about something, AND get it released into American theaters. Give this man another movie, quick~! Rip Torn is amazing. And the Russian woman is stunning too. Their relationship is complicated and believable and awful, but not nearly as bad as Rip Torns relationship with his son, played wonderfully by the man who was once in that TV show with Rob Morrow and some Elk.The music is beautiful, the camera-work divine, the pace gets slow at times but I stayed with it because I just loved seeing good actors get a chance to tear it up with a good script.Looking forward to this directors next film!

Sitting through this pointless, dreary, nearly incoherent mess of a movie is a painful endurance test I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I tried to sneak out of a sneak preview, but didn't want to offend the cast and crew. I should have offended them anyway -- gone home and done something creative -- like taking out the garbage. The fact that this lackluster snore-fest won the Grand Prize at Sundance and good reviews from major critics is the latest proof that "serious" (read: "tedious") reality/verite-style European film-making is the only type, apparently, that American reviewers and judges deem worthy these days (audiences, thankfully, know better). How far we've come from the days of great cinema! I can't imagine what Welles or Hitchcock or John Ford would have thought of this tripe. Even the founding fathers of neo-realism would have taken a nap long before the last reel creaked through the projector.I never thought I'd be thanking God for Spielberg until I stumbled away in a daze from the trance-inducing catastrophe named (pretentiously, of course) "Forty Shades of Blue."