Sometimes i feel like I am living in a parallel universe compared to critics, hype or liner notes on DVDs etc. Once in a while i really cannot identify the same film as the one described to me before hand. There are 5 and 6 star reviews strewn over the cover of this DVD and descriptions of a "remarkable love story" and "masterpiece" and so on. Let me explain why this is not the case.
An unemployed, single dad Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) moves to southern France with his son and crashes in his sisters house. He treats his son as shit, constantly talking in a harsh, commanding tone. He trains as a boxer and gets a job as a bouncer at a nightclub. One evening he stops a fight with the girl Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) involved and since she is bleeding he drives her home expecting to get into her pants. He points out that she is dressed like a whore, which she is really. She has a man at home and asks Alain to leave. After a serious accident as a killer whale trainer, Stéphanie has the lower parts of her legs amputated (the actress actually has real amputations). Alain is preoccupied with his job and his boxing and fucking the odd fitness girl while showing no interest whatsoever in his son. After a while Stéphanie calls Alain now that she is crippled and unable to hook up with better quality men and asks him to come visit her. He is not particularly shocked but offers to come by anytime she wants just to help her out. We would not want a single girl feeling lonely or anything ... but to hell with the son apparently. Then he just keeps helping her and supporting her, offering sex to her if she wants ... basically he is one giant white knight panting to a woman´s every need. He helps her rediscover her femininity and not be afraid of showing her crippled legs. He helps her get a good night out in her old nightclub ... i guess that is how a modern woman gets her life back. Her night-life rather. But then when Alain heads out with a girl, she gets mad and demands rules for his behavior. What? He has catered to her every need. He puts a side much of his life to help her and she demands he bows to her rules? What an entitled bitch. But off course, as the weak betamale (pretending to be alfa) he bows again and succumbs to her rules and basically becomes her little man bitch. He fights illegal boxing battles and she cheers on basically, as she is after big muscles that can protect her. By circumstances he is thrown out of his sisters home and he has to leave the city with his son. While walking on ice his son breaks through and is nearly drowned. Alain smashes up his hands trying to get down to him through the ice. From the hospital he calls Stéphanie and asks her how she is doing !!! His son has almost drowned and his hands are broken. What a brain dead and psychopathic father. But then the director has to show him as emphatic and being afraid of loosing his son and craving her support. And finally we see the happy, crippled family, the father in bandages at some boxing promotion, her with metal legs and the broken son caressing the macho boxing belt - while father and "mother" smiles.
This is not a love story. This is a freak show. This is a desscription of the destruction of the western nuclear family. There is no love anywhere here. It is primarily a gynocentric appeal to female vanity, the fantasy that beta men are just there to serve women, if they become "unable" to find a alfamale. The women behave like little spoiled brats. There is no saying thank you for being driven home, free of charge. There is no thank you for spending hours on helping her get going again. There is no empathy about the time she takes away from the son. Everything is crippled and egocentric. Now why would critics, Cannes and the like, fall over each other to praise this film? Well, who can ditch a movie about a crippled woman, right? He is a brain dead macho jerk who treats his son as shit and she is a self pitying, crippled and egotistical woman. What a fantastic love story. There is not just one second of love between them. It is a physical and emotional freak show, NOT a lovestory.
I do not like this film. It is glorifying dysfunction as a sort of freaky love instead of showing us how screwed the family situations are in the western world. The nuclear family was the last bastion against the advance of the welfare state but women have sold their soul to the ultimate alfamale, the state, and thus destroyed the family and children in the course. It makes it all the more sad that critics and such, can find a lovestory in this and that obvious neglect is ignored like that is how things should be. The empire of the western world is crumbling under state-financed gynocentrism.
Rating: 2/10
