Review of Bitter Moon

Bitter Moon (1992)
8/10
Deep and subject of analysis
12 August 2003
I found this film extremely well done for several reasons I will nominate.

It debates some moral issues, how far is it acceptable for a society still full of consevative people, such as the one performed by Hugh Grant, to acept a relationship such as that of the main characters? It is totally at the border of normality (meaning normality not necessarily what's good but what's common). The film also touches strongly the theme of hipocrisie (probably wrong spelled, this word.) once more in the character of Hugh Grant who, despite showing all the time disgut and repugnace for the story he is being told, is always secretly desiring and wanting something equivalent to happen to him (this hipocratic attitude may be the result of growing up in a world and a society where this kind of sexual liberties and practices are repressed and in here once more we are taken to atrong moral issues which take us to rethink the whole thing...).

Apart from this questions this film makes me also think about the relationships between men and women... Is there an everlasting love? or at least an everlasting relationship?... Suddendly I recalled Schopenhauer who claimed that no man could be happy with only one woman... maybe this film is showing that he was right... the pace of the relationship between Mimi and the writer was so high that they just emptied all there possibilities very soon, but if we put that at the scale of a normal marriage, aren't all the possibilities also tried at the end of 10 20 or 30 years? Can a marriage last happy for both till "death tears them apart" ?...

Besides this few topics of discussion (to which I could add some more if I just remembered them right now) I found this film very well directed with some beautiful scenes... also some strongs scenes that stay with us... Excelent performances for the three leading roles... Kristin Scott Thomas is also good in here but not so as in other films also because her somewhat small part in this one didn't allow her to show more than she did. This film proves once more Roman Polansky as one of the greatest directors of our times, since he shows he is totally in control of every detail of direction (I enjoyed the increase of the speed together with the increase of intensity of the relationship among the couple). Good dialogues but specially excelent speeches of the writer whenever he becomes the narrator which is often... Also an excelent note for the soundtrack by Vangelis and other well known songs which appear along. A must see.
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