I entered this film with high expectations and was sorely disappointed, and for someone who usually enjoys period films with strong character development, that's saying something. Everything I needed to know about the character(s) was revealed in the slow spiraling first ten minutes of the movie during which I was already looking at my watch and waiting for the pace of the film to pick up. It never did.
Here is the story: bored, well-to-do housewife, has left boring, and sadly loyal husband with a difficult mother for shallow, self-consumed air force pilot only to find that the relationship doesn't work. We don't know exactly why. He is certainly damaged by the war and hates his current mundane life, and it's hinted that he's not smart enough for her, though for some inconceivable reason she can't seem to break her infatuation with him. She hates her life and herself, so rather than spending it sitting in a dark flat staring at the walls and hoping for lung cancer to set in, she decides to kill herself. This is where the audience comes into the film.
Unfortunately for the us, she fails, so we are forced to endure watching the remaining 90 minutes of the film in small, yet amazingly interminable snippets of her life, any of which, if developed at all, had the potential to be interesting. By the last 20 minutes, it was a toss up which of us, her or me, would survive to see the light of day.
Here is the story: bored, well-to-do housewife, has left boring, and sadly loyal husband with a difficult mother for shallow, self-consumed air force pilot only to find that the relationship doesn't work. We don't know exactly why. He is certainly damaged by the war and hates his current mundane life, and it's hinted that he's not smart enough for her, though for some inconceivable reason she can't seem to break her infatuation with him. She hates her life and herself, so rather than spending it sitting in a dark flat staring at the walls and hoping for lung cancer to set in, she decides to kill herself. This is where the audience comes into the film.
Unfortunately for the us, she fails, so we are forced to endure watching the remaining 90 minutes of the film in small, yet amazingly interminable snippets of her life, any of which, if developed at all, had the potential to be interesting. By the last 20 minutes, it was a toss up which of us, her or me, would survive to see the light of day.