What struck me immediately when I spotted this DVD in a library was the unlikely teaming of the two leads; Yvan Attal personifies aggressiveness, virility, a sort of thinking man's ferret, hyper-active and largely insensitive whereas Bruni Tedeschi personifies fragility, porcelain beauty, vulnerability, I've more or less wanted to protect her in virtually every film I've seen her in because she exudes that rare quality that Judy Garland had. This is definitely Valeria's kind of film and by now she could phone it in; it's very much in the groove of Marion Vernoux's Rien a faire even though Kahn is light years short of Vernoux on the basis of these two movies. I would and will continue to watch Valeria in anything but I won't be in a hurry to watch this one again nor buy the DVD.

Mathieu, a Parisian architect, is called to his dying mother's side. The painful realization she will soon die is made a bit less trying when he finds Maya, who has come back to the area after being in Africa for a while. Mathieu has lived to regret the loss of the love of his youth, and now, married, and having his own business, things begin to unravel for him.Maya also has regrets. Deep inside she never stopped loving Mathieu. Now that her former lover is back, she finds herself at a low point in her life. She also makes a tactical error in pursuing a situation that will leave her broken hearted because Mathieu is unable to commit to her, even though he tries.What Mathieu and Maya relive is their former passion. His wife Lisa senses she is losing him because he is haunted by the regret he feels in having left Maya when he did. After a mad Mathieu almost breaks down pursuing a resolute Maya decides not to continue seeing him, the lovers meet three years later only to realize there is nothing left of what they once had.Cedric Kahn wrote and directed the film. The film will resonate more with French audiences because the way the people understand what a passion can do to two people that have loved so deeply. It is hard to understand what these two lovers feel when they meet again after years of not having seen one another.The casting of Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Yvan Attal in the main roles works out because of they are intelligent performers. Basically, they are the whole film. Arly Jover, seen as Lisa, shows a promise of going far in the cinema. The musical score is by none other than Philip Glass. The cinematographer, Celine Bozon, captures intimacy between the Mr. Attal and Ms. Bruni-Tedeschi in vivid detail, bringing the viewer right into the picture.

Yvan Attal runs circles around Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in Cédric Kahn's balls-out story of love passion and emotional confusion, 'Regret'/'Les regrets,' a movie about a youthful love affair renewed fifteen years later when both lovers are married to other people. The heartbeats are fast, and even if it feels more like anxiety than passion, Kahn and his stars take us on a wild ride. This is a lot of silliness, but it's also fun and beautifully photographed, and it does powerfully evoke the feelings of adolescent romantic obsession -- except that the adolescent here is a a grown man acting very immature and unwise. If there's an American remake, it can't be this good, because the French can do l'amour fou better than we can. Mathieu Liévin (Attal) is a middle-aged architect, married but without children, who runs into old flame Maya (Bruni Tedeschi) in the town square while back home with his mom dying in the hospital. The camera tracks in on both of them with that "gotcha' effect that means, these two folks are going to zoom in on each other pretty soon.What follows is all the chaos and excitement of a first-rate thriller, but without any dead bodies,though there are moments when you wonder if Matthieu and Maya are going to make it through alive. Much reckless endangerment occurs here, as well as chasing cars and trains and running from a man armed with a chainsaw. Maya turns out to have a drunken husband called Frank (Philippe Katerine) who's in the wine business and has a tendency to hatch elaborate schemes involving outside funding. Maya is maddeningly indecisive. Fifteen years ago Matthieu and Maya parted because they were driving each other crazy. They get right back into it in short order, except that life now is much more complicated.Matthieu's architect wife Lisa (Arly Jover) is pressuring him to enter competition for a major project. After his mother dies his ne'er-do-well brother wants to sell her house to pay off debts. Frank has his schemes, which Maya keeps committing to; she also has a daughter by a deceased African husband. The omnipresence of cell phones and the possibility of texting (energetically used, and romantic, here) seems to speed up the confusion and the wild pursuits. Maya is on and off about all this, ready to run off with Matthieu one minute, completely opposed the next.Kahn, who wrote as well as directed, has experience with serial-killer, crime-suspense, and sexual-obsession themes, and the mood here is one of thinly veiled criminal insanity on the part of Matthieu, with Maya as an unreliable but often equally mad collaborator. The film is skillful at weaving this pattern of wild behavior impulsively around the obstacles of the principals' everyday lives and commitments. This is adultery, of course, but it's a pumped-up, hyperventilating kind that we've rarely seen on screen, a kind that looks more akin than usual to flat-out criminal activity and is paced like a thriller. Attal is good as the hyperactive lover in his second adolescence, and Bruni Tedeschi is convincing and superb looking as the old flame he can never see without grabbing and kissing and, more often than not. quickly making love to on a table top or a stairway. Full disrobing never occurs. Shouting matches can occur anywhere. Matthieu is continually confrontational, and Maya is unable to confront.Some Phillip Glass pieces are particularly well used during a ominous car ride when the adulterous couple is rushing away together and their desperation seems suicidal. The good-looking images are thanks to cinematographer Céline Bozon.None of this necessarily means anything, but Kahn is having fun with his blend of unlikely elements and he takes the viewer on an enjoyable ride. The near-absurdity of the behavior at times drew derision at Cannes. On the other hand, the feelings that are evoked seem perfectly valid as a description of the vagaries and torments of love -- in a brilliantly heightened and updated form.Shown at Cannes, 'Les regrets' debuted theatrically in France September 2, 2009 to fair-to-good reviews. Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center March 2010.

Mathieu Liévin is an architect whose life seems stable and ideal. He is a quiet man, is in business with his girlfriend and seems very successful. As is ailing mother reaches the palliative stage of her illness, his life is about to change drastically. When he crosses a former lover on the street, the two of them begin a passionate and destructive affair.This relatively well acted film suffers from a slightly muddled plot and weak characters. At its heart, the biggest problem is that writer/director Cédric Kahn seems unable to decide whether this is a film about Mathieu or a film about Mathieu and his lover Maya. This weakness is constant throughout the entire movie up to the very ending and I am surprised a French director would not even notice this fault back at the writing stage and commit one way or the other. Right off the bat, this is frustrating because any writer who does not know what he is writing about can't create a lasting and quality film experience.The second fault (related to the first) is that it is difficult to empathize with Maya, and the depressed and bland characterization by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi make it even very difficult to imagine Mathieu would feel so passionately about her. She is unattractive, lifeless, moody. One must suppose that the trial of losing his mother is what is affecting Mathieu so strongly but if it is so, it is rather vaguely implied.Where the movie shines is in certain scenes showcasing how desperate and wild people will get when passion overcomes an individual, affecting reason. It was particularly interesting to watch Mathieu seemingly act like a teenager, throwing himself over running cars and generally acting like an hormone-crazed younger man. But to the very disappointing end, Les Regrets never ever commits to themes that it wants to explore. The whole structure is very much that of French art cinema but the artistry on display here is all style, no substance. Giving it a 3 because Attal was rather convincing in certain scenes.