BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

jleon25 Maybe the acting and cinematography is great but the story line is stupid. Here is another marriage where the wife is a wacko sex freak and the spineless husband just stands by in therapy sessions like a prime cuckold. Love might be a factor in some marriages, but not in this one.BTW, the therapy sessions we see, were for her evaluation to continue her job as a research doctor, which she ends up getting fired and losing her license to practice. We never see them continue the therapy for addressing her problems. Hence, another cuckold relationship.

alluomo I found this film unsettling and unsatisfying--but that is exactly the point! For it deals with a character so flawed, one must accept the uncomfortable reality that these profound personal deficits will never (realistically) be resolved.Which leads the husband to ask the pivotal question in the entire film: "But is it enough?" Clearly he is in great pain as he wrestles with this quandary in which he finds himself stuck.Max married this woman who APPEARED to be a highly successful, beautiful woman physician. But marrying across different cultural lines can be tricky to ascertain authentic personality vs. unfamiliar social customs. When newly in love, we have a blind spot to deficits in our partner and easily rationalize them away.Sadly, this woman's actions--and subsequent reactions--reveal her personality has suffered from arrested development. She is a Narcissist who doesn't care how her actions affect those who love her. Gratifying her ego trumps all other considerations.She never makes ONE display of empathy or compassion--not once does she even frown or show appropriate discomfort (while her husband cries in bed..). Her affect and behavior are HIGHLY abnormal. (Also, note that she is NOT primarily a clinical MD, but rather a researcher; this has allowed her deficit in compassion to slip through the cracks).It's a social statement on how highly we value physical beauty and academic achievement--so much we might miss the person inside is incompletely formed(!).In the final scenes, her husband realizes the extent of her deficits and must weigh two traumatic alternatives: leaving her (mother of his three children) or staying with her (denying him a compassionate, sensitive partner he desperately wants and needs). It's a very grim prospect for Max, and he knows it. Coming from a traditional Indianbackground, I infer that he will choose to stay with her for the sake of children and social pressure.The film leaves us somehow feeling "ripped off" and unsatisfied as viewers--but this is by design because they mirror Max's reality. There will be no resolution of the core problem, only a lifetime of painful coping. Ultimately, he will have to decide if indeed "it is enough"---or not.

rowmorg Insufferable longueurs that test the patience to breaking point, posing as artiness. Complete failure to supply backstory so that we actually know nothing about the characters while pretending to think about them. Baffling behaviour by a medical doctor --- well, that's understandable enough, considering what they endure to achieve their licence. But that behaviour is never explained, and the character says smugly that to explain "would only make it worse". Since she had sexual intercourse with men selected from her hospital's patients, she loses her licence to practice and she and her man and their children head off to India, where nothing further happens at all. I could not understand why they spoke English, in rather sketchy accents, and why the French in the movie was not subtitled. The whole thing was so anti-audience and so extremely uningratiating that I felt totally uninvolved and not motivated to watch, which is a feeling evidently shared by the vast majority of humanity. How can someone do this to European cinema? How could the Dutch pay for it?

kosmasp I had no idea what this movie would be about. But it played at the Berlin International Film Festival this year and the title sounded intriguing. Plus it did fit into my schedule. It really goes all the way and is pretty harsh and raw. While you never really get into the head of our main actress, she seems to bear it all. So this isn't for the delicate viewers amongst us.Unfortunately it is not as good as I'd wish it would be. It tries very hard to be something poetic, something that will make you think about things. Philosophical even, if you want to call it that. And while it has really good points, it never achieves its goal.