Juliet Binoche's master-class skills as an actress are unequivocal, but the gargantuan task of convincing one into understanding why her character just couldn't bring herself to tell the truth was one that escaped me. I kept banging my fists on any solid object close by, saying "tell her!". Perhaps that was the intention of the director, or maybe it's because I'm a male, who has had no children, and probably never will, that made it difficult to understand the intensity of a mother's grief. Either way, I found the overall experience annoying, and only felt obligated to complete this film because of my loyalty to Ms.Binoche. I empathized (and cried)at the end when the long hug took place, but still didn't understand or accept the mother's behavior.

This visually beautiful, if self-consciously arty, Italian film marks the feature debut of Piero Messina who certainly displays all the promise of a major film-maker if he can only learn to move things along at a somewhat more acceptable pace and be less concerned with the 'look' of his films and more concerned with the feelings of his characters. This is a somewhat high-toned piece based on a play by Pirandello and it's very much designed around the performances of Juliette Binoche as a grieving mother and Lou de Laage as her son's girlfriend. It's certainly well done but it also smacks of the worst kind of art-house cinema; this is Antonioni-light. See it by all means though you may have to keep pinching yourself from time to time to stay awake.

"The Wait" ("L'Attesa") is a film that has really nice acting but the story itself didn't do much for me. Its vague ending left me cold and the behaviors of the leading lady, Anna (Juliet Binoche) just didn't make a lot of sense--regardless of what REALLY happened at the end.When the film begins, Jeanne (Lou de Laâge) arrives at a Sicilian villa and instead of being greeted, she's given a meal by a servant and then retires to bed without seeing the woman of the house, Anna. The next day, Jeanne comes downstairs and finds that there's been some sort of funeral...and Jeanne tells her it's because her brother died...though it's pretty obvious that this might NOT be the truth. Jeanne has come to see Anna's son and spend her vacation with him....but through the course of the film, the son never arrives and Jeanne is feeling abandoned...though Anna and her seem to have a few moments together bonding.Where does all this go? Well, as I mentioned above, the ending is a bit vague and it's easy to see two very different interpretations. I didn't really care about either one because Anna's actions simply didn't make much sense....and because of that the film lost me. Well acted, this film needed some better writing as the characters didn't always seem realistic or believable.

A mother unexpectedly meets her son's fiancée at a villa in Sicily and gets to know her as she waits for her son to arrive. He never does because he happens to be dead. Director: Piero Messina Stars: Juliette Binoche and a bunch of Italian unknowns. L'attesa (The Pointless Wait) Italian film starring Juliette Binoche as mother who cannot accept that her son is dead and refuses to reveal this for two tedious hours to son's girlfriend who comes to visit hoping to join him. Shaggy dog take on Waiting for Godot. So boring that after a while even the endless closeups of Binoche's marvelous physiognomy start to grind on viewer nerves. Impressive cinematography wasted on pointless tale that could have have been told in ten minutes. Waste of time unless you are absolutely mad about Binoche, which I was until this. Viewed and put to sleep by at Venice film festival, 2015