We've seen the scheme before: boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy either wins the girl or doesn't. But this tried and tested storyline is given a very subtle, intuitive approach by director Stéphane Brizé, who manages to keep our attention in every single scene, despite making the scenes very long, quiet, understated - and deprived of frantic plot point.
Brizé's gently constructed canvas would collapse, however, if it wasn't for his actors: Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain are just exceptional in the main parts.
He is increasingly troubled and aroused by the encounter with his son's school-teacher. She is the aloof teacher; estranged, unassuming - and yet, we sense a growing yearning.
The intimate scene in which they kiss for the first time is simply a tour de force of acting, directing and staging. Such emotional authenticity is seldom seen on the screen. (A similarly truthful, impulsive kiss-scene can be witnessed in "Before Sunrise", Richard Linklater's bittersweet Vienna-tale with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The world comes to a complete stand-still when Hawke and Delpy kiss for the first time at the Vienna Prater.)
Aure Atika plays Lindon's wife. Atika doesn't have a lot of on-screen moments, but when she does, she delivers wonderfully, revealing an ambivalent state-of-mind with the most delicate tools of her craft: a silent gaze, a sad smile, a few mundane words to quench the growing anxiety.
Brizé's gently constructed canvas would collapse, however, if it wasn't for his actors: Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain are just exceptional in the main parts.
He is increasingly troubled and aroused by the encounter with his son's school-teacher. She is the aloof teacher; estranged, unassuming - and yet, we sense a growing yearning.
The intimate scene in which they kiss for the first time is simply a tour de force of acting, directing and staging. Such emotional authenticity is seldom seen on the screen. (A similarly truthful, impulsive kiss-scene can be witnessed in "Before Sunrise", Richard Linklater's bittersweet Vienna-tale with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The world comes to a complete stand-still when Hawke and Delpy kiss for the first time at the Vienna Prater.)
Aure Atika plays Lindon's wife. Atika doesn't have a lot of on-screen moments, but when she does, she delivers wonderfully, revealing an ambivalent state-of-mind with the most delicate tools of her craft: a silent gaze, a sad smile, a few mundane words to quench the growing anxiety.