Reviews

I can understand why so many people enjoyed this movie considering the quality of the actors and the adult themes but I would like to point out some cinematic deficiencies. Unfortunately the talented performers only emphasized the amateurish mugging of Dev Patel's performance which I found distracting whenever he appeared on the screen. I found it unrealistic that all the main characters would stay in a dump once they arrived in India. The movie was overly long due to poor editing. It seemed like the same conflicts were being play over and over. Some of the conflicts, especially between the young Indian lovers, were too conveniently resolved to be plausible. A better script would not have had a voiceless character pop up at the end to finally speak and tie up an important conflict in such a neat manner or have the hotel's future resolved so conveniently.

Viewers of A History of Violence would need to have a total suspension of reality to get this movie out of a violent fantasy-land. As portrayed in this film, small town America takes multiple killings in stride, albeit after one day of excitement. A lonely sheriff is the total display of law enforcement and it seems he never heard of fingerprints to positively establish questionable identity. I suppose we are to assume that the big city police are no more proficient. Doesn't anybody in law enforcement read a newspaper or watch the news? The blame must be laid with the director and scriptwriter. The leads are all excellent actors who are trying their best with inferior material. Stylized violence would have been preferable to the manner it is displayed in this film. The physical aggressiveness in one of the sex scenes and the lack of post-coital emotional contact detracted from the supposed presumed love and tenderness that the protagonists had developed over many years of marriage.

Louis Malle is a master of representing human behavior in a believable manner. By avoiding stereotypical characters, the director maintains a more intense level of suspense due to the unpredictability of the main protagonists. All the performances are excellent especially Pierre Blaise and Aurore Clement as Lucien and France. In my old age, I find French and Italian films present women in a much more interesting and appealing manner than American films where they tend to be little more than eye candy or character studies with minimal sensuality. Virginia Madsen's portrayal of Maya in Sideways is one of the few American performances that can compare with Aurore Clement as France or Jeanne Moreau in Le Notte. Male European directors undoubtedly have a better and more mature understanding of the female psyche. The untimely death of Pierre Blaise shorty after the completion of this film only adds to the importance of this work since he displays a unique talent which was tragically cut short. Weaknesses in the film are a limited portrayal of the resistance fighters and a truncated ending which did not segue well with the final scene.