la vie d'une autre

I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to watch a French movie. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the French know how to make movies about love. "La vie d'une autre," (Another women's life) stars Juliette Binoche and Mathieu Kassovitz, a story about a women who falls in love and wakes up 15 years later. She doesn't remember anything that happens during that time, which at first, makes for a lot of clumsy attempts to find out how her life has turned out. She discovers she has a son and that she is in the middle of a divorce.

I loved the movie, mainly because of its simplicity. It's a story about how ambition can get in the way of the most meaningful part of someone's life.  Juliette's character, Marie, tries to understand why her own character changes so much over the course of 15 years. She is a very successful and rich woman, but she has very few relationships in her lives. She practically has no friends and her husband seems to despise her. 

At times, it was almost painful to see how their relationship had deteriorated. Marie tries to understand what went wrong, since  she only remembers how she feel in love with the brooding artist, Paul, played by Mathieu. We get a glimpse of her life at the company and try to piece together what happens to her.

The ending was a bit abrupt for me, I felt like it needed a bit more, but just before there's a scene where she has a meaningful conversation with her soon to be ex and I found it quite beautiful. Although there was a quick turn of events, Juliette and Mathieu's acting doesn't disappoint. They're both able to depict what each character is feeling. 

I'd recommend it. If anything, it's a good late-night-kind of movie ;)