You won't be disappointed!

one of my absolute favorites!

From my favorite movies..

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A movie full of dramatic irony and beauty. I love Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Bettany. On screen, the characters are so believable that I forget that I am watching a movie. I'm transported to this world of war and snobbery, kite flying and poetry. And every twist in the plot basically rips my heart out or sends it soaring. It's so different from any other romance film that I've ever seen. The premise is familiar, but it's beautifully done. Definitely worth seeing. Keep a box of tissues nearby. This movie made me want to read more William Blake. Watch it, and you'll see why. Seriously. It is a film that grips the heart, wraps up the senses, and causes emotions to boil. Despite the poetry in the film, it is mainly a movie of action, of eyes, beautiful, intense eyes. See this movie.

I wonder of some of the other reviewers and I saw the same film. While this film had great visual beauty it was slow as molasses. That isn't always bad if one feels involved in what is going on on screen but that was not the case here. It seems that many reviewers blame Paul Bettany's character's weak will and Bonham Carter's character's lack of moral compass for their affair. I don't think this is the case. For one thing I have never known love to be something one can feel or not feel at will. For another, Olivia Williams' Madeleine seems to have lost her passion for her husband at least by the time the affair is revealed to the audience. Did anyone not notice her (literally) turning a cold shoulder when her husband comes to kiss her at her dressing table? Did anyone notice the challenge in Bettany's voice when, after the affair is discovered, he kisses Williams and tells her that this is what she has coming back to her revealing the lovelessness (at least physically speaking) that would likely have doomed their marriage regardless of outside influence?Carter does not, for me, possess the kind of fatal beauty that would make her character irresistible to a happily married man and I don't think the film intends for us to feel that way about her. Williams is much more classically beautiful and if the sister character (Carter) had been supposed to be a femme fatale then the roles of sister and wife would have been better switched. It was love that brought the husband and sister together not just a submission to passion by two morally weak characters. Yes, something can be said about the sister allowing herself to be in such a position. She might have decided that, love notwithstanding, the great wrong was not necessarily being with a married man but being unfaithful to her own sister. Still, it seems clear that the marriage was an empty one anyway with only the couples' love for their doomed son giving them much reason to continue the charade. Remember too, that their daughter was the product of angry assault and not the result of a resumption of regular marital relations.With all that juicy plot substance going for it I still think the film was a dismal failure. Very little exploration of Bettany and Carter's life together and despite the fact that the war plays a big part in Bettany's character's demise there was very little sense of the times for the part of the film that takes place before and during the war. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone except hard core fans of the leads (and Eleanor Bron who was so great in "Help)and as a chance to see more of Olivia Williams who deserves better than the clunkers ("Born Romantic","The Postman","To Kill A King") she's appeared in. Of course, she has also done episodes of "Van der Valk" which I would love to see but which, it seems, will never come out on video or DVD.

Despite the valiant efforts of Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams this is fairly forgettable stuff, in territory which has been done before and much better. Helena Bonham Carter must feel like she's in Groundhog Day. That said, Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams made the best of pretty mediocre base material filled with predictable unimaginative contrivance, to give performances which show each to be capable of moving and powerful acting. Thaddeus O'Sullivan seemed to be just going through the motions, great direction can come in many different styles, however, it always needs empathy for its subject matter, without which there is gravitation towards the hollow and formulaic. All in all, a worthwhile night out if you like your romantic period pieces, but no more, enlivened by Bettany, who hopefully will go on to do better things, and Williams, who really deserves the chances to move her career up a gear.

My, what a repressed lot the inter-war British were, or so film-makers born decades later would have us believe. Well, in this movie here they are again being more repressed than ever - and the ones that aren't repressed are slightly batty, reckless and self-indulgent. Overall the film affects great seriousness, but cannot escape the melodramatic and contrived nature of its source material (a pot-boiler-ish novel by Rosamund Lehman dating from the 1960s). Bonham-Carter reprises roles she'd done before with ease. Williams is rather wooden, even allowing for the (you guesses it) repressed nature of her character. Bettany has done better, but carries off his role believably. But this is not enough to lift the film out of a rather unsatisfying gray area between melodrama and serious/historical period drama.