Das bessere leben

So I decided to visit the French Film Festival in Prague and chose a film that in places quite explicitly showed two stories of two young college girls from Paris. But it wasn’t as brutal as it might have seemed at first glance. Małgorzata Szumowska has chosen a subtle approach in terms of shots, so I was sometimes saying to myself that had the camera moved a few millimeters to the side, this film would have become a soft porn flick… or just a porn flick. On the other hand, I expected a more interesting story. For example, I didn’t understand the character portrayed by Juliette Binoche at all. I understand that she is an artist, just like a lot of French people. But her family or some of her behavior was completely out of it. And the ending seemed to fade into nothing. Why was the family there at all? And in the end, I also realized that she didn’t even finish writing her article in the film... even though she pours so much effort into it during an hour and a half of the running time. (24.11.2014)

Die französisch-polnische Verbindung im Film funktioniert, davon haben wir uns x-mal überzeugt, man muss nichts aufzählen. Dies bestätigt sich auch im Jahre 2012 in einer Interpretation der eigenwilligen polnischen Regisseurin Szumowska. Ihr vorheriger Streifen hat alle möglichen Gefühle in mir hinterlassen, nun ging sie mit der Offenheit einiger Szenen noch weiter. J. Binouche und A. Demoustier standardgemäß hervorragend, im Drehbuch hätte man vielleicht den einen oder anderen Makel beseitigen müssen, doch sonst handelt es sich um einen sehr guten Film. (21.08.2012)