Sorry, this movie sucks

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a movie that stays with you for a long time after viewing. The acting is extraordinary, the attraction between the two main characters palpable, the photography and sceneries beautiful. I really don't see why so much negative criticism is directed toward the plot. Passion has existed since time beginning and this is what this movie is all about, an uncontrollable, all consuming passion, which is made very believable by the wonderful.Kristin Scott Thomas. Sergi López is perfect as the lover, passionate, tender and vulnerable. If you are looking for the reason why Suzanne falls in love with him, those are the main reasons, besides the fact that he is obviously good looking. I enjoyed the movie tremendously. Every scene was essential to the plot, no gratuitous sex scenes here. And the style was elegant, as only the French know how to do.

The upper middle-class lady meets worker and a passionate affair takes place. That's not an uncommon theme in our hemisphere, but it's very easy to parodize. Not at least when it's taken so seriously as here.Of course the subject is a serious one, like all love stories are, both on film and in reality. But on film the rules are fairly known. We are aware of the signs, we expect a certain plot and certain things to happen and I'm sorry to say that this film doesn't make us disappointed, Or perhaps that's exactly what we are supposed to be and also are.Don't give us another southern French passion story, until the genre is renewed.

Kristin Scott Thomas has tended to play hard-ass women who keep their emotions in check, but in LEAVING the ice-princess doesn't just melt, she gives off steam! The sex scenes between Suzanne, the bored Parisian housewife, and her beefy Spanish builder are fairly bracing; it's clearly not his intellect that she's fallen for. Swapping her sterile modern house (irony here: her dull husband's a surgeon) for a seedy suburban apartment doesn't seem to faze her, but drama - indeed, melodrama - is lurking on the horizon. The director gives most of the ending away at the beginning (echoes of Sunset Boulevard), which I thought was a mistake.Wife takes lover, tragedy ensues: it's a hoary old plot that shouldn't work but it does, thanks entirely to Scott Thomas's incandescent performance. Hopefully, she'll win awards for this.

Catherine Corsini's drama about infidelity and its consequences follows hot on the heels of Mademoiselle Chambon and I Am Love, two other recent similarly themed dramas from Europe.Kristin Scott Thomas (from I've Loved You So Long, etc) plays Suzanne, a happily married forty-something mother of two adolescent children. Her husband Samuel (played by noted Israeli actor/ director Yvan Attal) is a successful surgeon, well off, respected and politically well connected. When Suzanne decides that she wants to return to work as a physiotherapist after having spent the past fifteen years raising her two children, Samuel is supportive and decides to redevelop the garage into an office and clinic for her. He hires family friend Remi (Bernard Blancan) to oversee the construction work. But Remi is busy and subcontracts the job to Ivan (Sergi Lopez, best remembered as the villain of Pan's Labyrinth). Suzanne finds herself attracted to the swarthy, sweaty Spaniard, and begins a torrid affair with him. She announces that she plans to leave her family to live with Ivan, a decision that tears apart the once loving and close-knit family, and has tragic consequences. Scott Thomas' terrific performance as the passionate Suzanne, who has grown bored with her comfortable life, drives this French drama. Her facial expressions brilliantly and silently convey a gamut of expressions, from joy, happiness, ecstasy, to guilt, determination and doubt, and we can almost see what she's thinking. And her ability to speak French perfectly is tremendous. Attal (from Rush Hour 3, Munich, etc) is also good as Samuel; initially he seems a sympathetic character, but he quickly reveals himself capable of extreme cruelty in the face of Suzanne's betrayal. Lopez is also very good. Although Leaving shares a number of thematic similarities with the recent I Am Love, it is a better film. It is more engaging and emotionally satisfying than that pretentious, self-consciously arty and ultimately dull drama. Gaelle Mace's script is sparse, stripped back to the essentials, and Corsini's direction is suitably economical. There's not a wasted moment, or hint of flab or unnecessary padding in its brief but intense 85 minutes.