We just came back from Paris and wanted to get an impression of Paris' society in the 18 hundreds when we decided to watch this movie. Actually, we were quite excited since we did not know the director nor any of her former movies. We waited for the story to unfold and draw us into the atmosphere - but the story, the actors, the script were so predictable and stilted. Even the 'erotic' scenes were anything but erotic. At some points the people in the movie theater started to laugh and we got terribly bored. I always saw the actors acting which destroys the whole magic of a movie. I don't think that this movie has anything to do with the great tradition of French movie making. Close shots, love for details, the good looks of the leading male actor, and beautiful costumes don't make a good movie.

An elderly couple (Yolande Moreau and Michael Lonsdale) commences the film amidst idle chatter and bloodied fowls, proudly earning their stripes as 19th century versions of Gladys and Abner Kravitz with the newly engaged libertine Ryno de Marigny's (Fu'ad Ait Aattou) torrid 10-year long amour with Italian-Spanish coquette Lady Vellini (Asia Argento) as their scandal du jour. The hot-blooded Vellini finds out soon enough that her overweening extra-pallid dandy is soon out to marry his way into higher circles through the fragile heart of virginal Hermangarde (Breillat devotee Roxane Mesquida) and through the sprightly imaginations of her household's feisty matriarch (Claude Sarraute). And hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially when the woman in question is directed by agent provocateur Catherine Breillat, she of "Anatomy of Hell", "Romance X" and "Fat Girl" infamy. But here, Breillat tones down the transgressions of venereal shock for the (comparatively) sumptuous reservoirs of rapturous passion and fervent sexual anxieties – a refined take on the stock battle-of-the-sexes formula with art-house cinephiles' wet dream Argento as Breillat's latest codpiece in her intense dissection of Parisian high society's cannibalism and its mordant gender politics. Argento's Velli is no less than a force of nature as she ascends into a conduit for Breillat's declarations and shouts it from the rafters; her sexual aggressiveness play tricks on masculine insecurities and her vociferousness, an affront to feminine coyness. At the peak of her captivating sensuality and at the height of her enigmatic inscrutability, Argento's magnificence here is one of furious defiance.

Although I've seen several of them now, I still don't know if I actually LIKE Catherine Breillat films. Her films are a strange contradiction: On one hand, they contain a lot of pretty graphic sex and always feature some of the most attractive actresses in Europe (and this one with Asia Argento and Roxanne Mesquia is certainly no exception). On the other though, they are often very depressing and told with such a harsh feminist bent that they probably make most people (well, most men anyway)feel more like castrating themselves than getting turned on. ( I actually haven't even seen her most notorious film, "Fat Girl", but after the truly depressing experience that was the supposedly very similar "36 Fillete" I've never wanted to).You would expect then given Breillat's typical misanthropic bent that when she made a French costume drama like this one, the liaisons would be even more dangerous and the intentions even crueler. This is actually a surprisingly soft-hearted film though where all the main characters are pretty likable and sympathetic (at least in some ways). The only typically harsh Breillat touch is a couple having frenzied sex next to the funeral pyre of their dead daughter. The basic story involves a handsome young rake, who is about to marry a beautiful young heiress (Mesquia) with the blessing of her jaded-but-wise grandmother (who, since this is set in 1835, is herself a battle-scarred veteran of the original pre-revolutionary "dangerous liaison" era). He is unable to give up his long-time mistress, however, a social-climbing Spanish divorcée (Argento) with whom he has had a passionate ten year love-hate relationship. All the acting is very good and the characters believable (although you do have to wonder why a 19th Spanish noblewoman would have a tattoo on her butt). My only real complaint was that it was about a half an hour too long and the climax was pretty anti-climactic.If you like either French costume dramas or typical Catherine Breillat films, you may or may not like this, since it ends being very different than either. It's not too bad though.

This is a beautiful period film with a lot of Breillat's trademark unflinching look at love and war between sexes. The story is old, but this is first time I see it put so frankly - they not marrying the the love of their life....Sex is shot amazingly. There is an eyeful of historical detail and actors are looking great, dressed and undressed. The book it is based on according to Breillat, is autobiographical, which makes it even more interesting.To put it simply - great work in many aspects. Bravo again Catherine!