Reviews (2)

Well written story
This film set on the beaches of Brittany, is an engaging story that shows the pleasure and pain of adolcence. During the summer of 1958 two sisters, 13 and 8, are too much for their governess too handle. There spirited antics take them from pranks to real trouble. But neither of the girls are ready for the path that their mother has chosen. Diane Kurys did a wounderful job directing this film.

Coming of age adventure at Brittany's Beaches...
During the late 50s Frédérique and Sophie, two sisters 13 and eight years old, are sent with a governess to spend their summer in Brittany. Their parents never disclose why they are not going to Brittany with them, but the secret cannot be kept from the children. As the film unfolds the children commit several shenanigans when failing parental supervision surrounds them, however, one day Frédérique trips on the secret of why the parents did not come with them to Brittany it changes her view of life. C'est La Vie is an interesting "coming of age" film where the audience follows the summer of two young girls containing friends, love, adventure, and betrayal. The story intrigues through humor and tragedy, which ends up being a pleasing cinematic experience. ... Read more

Description

Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel star in Diane Kurys’ (Entre Nous) tempestuous love story between two of the 19th century’s most headstrong Romanticists, writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset. Iconoclastic, proto-feminist writer Sand has usually been depicted onscreen in the context of her decade-long romance with Chopin, but Kurys concentrates upon her earlier more intense two year liaison with de Musset, whose fictionalized version of their affair was entitled "Confessions of a Child of the Century". Their relationship – which takes place in the upper realms of French society in the early 1830s against a backdrop pf great artistic tumult (Hugo, Delacroix, Berlioz, Balzac, Merimee et al.) and social upheaval – became the celebrity coupling of their day. Lavish period production design including the grand costuming of Christian Lacroix (working in film for the first time) and the lush cinematography by Vilko Filac (best known for his work with Emir Kusturica) all contribute to this classic piece of "heritage cinema." Children of the Century was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Costumes, Designs OK - but the story is not quite accurate.
The Alfred de Musset that is portayed here is quite different than the one I know. I think George Sand's relationship with Chopin was much more tumultuous and far more interesting, especially when we would factor in the fact that Sand's son took her side and her daughter took Chopin's side. I think there would be interesting dynamics there.

I have one major problem with this story line. We know Sand met Musset in the 1830s and that Musset died in 1857, which happens in the movie. But Chopin died in 1849 - and he is never mentioned!! There is a reference to Liszt being a priest im the mid-1850s. That was a bit early. That came around 1860 as I recollected. If the script intended to relay the idea that everytime Sand and Musset fought that they didn't see each other for a number of years at a time, then it was not effective. For one thing, Sand never looked any older and neither did Musset - at all.

Conclusion: George Sand is one of the most interesting women in history. This movie doesn't quite get her right. Neither did it get her right in the movie Impromptu, where we have a completely different Musset. But, in all fairness to the directors and the producers, portraying these "children of the century" along which I would include Chopin, Delacroix, Balzac, Hugo, Liszt, D'Agoult, Berlioz, Gautier, Saint-Beuve, Flaubert (who knew Sand very well), among others, in a movie, would not be an easy feat. So I congratulate them for a good job - half done.

Passion is What it Takes to, One Day, Say "I Have Lived."
You gasp when she gasps. She vexes you when she's mad. She has this inscrutable ability of stealing you from your surroundings by a daring look or a despairing smile. Juliette Binoche. That passionate, vivid woman whose eyes speak to you like the night, and chronicle the tale of natural talent. In 'Les Enfants du Siecle' (Children of the Century) she impersonates George Sand who had inspired Chateaubriand and Herzen and whose works had influenced Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Proust. Sand had played a significant role in the novel's evolution. She had called sexual identity and gender destiny into question in her own fiction. A controversial rebel and illustrious romanticist in an era that could espouse Hugo and Lamartine, she defied convention and led off a free-spirited and irreversible way of life for women. "My profession," she once wrote, "is to be free."

The movie recounts her intimate involvement with Alfred de Musset, the poet and playwright attractively played by Benoit Magimel. Musset was a devil-may-care whoremonger and gambler who indulged in opium, but who was also the man who adored her absolutely and could not live without her. He was also the man for whom she had suffered the pain of her lifetime. "Once my heart was captured," she tells, "reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?"

Sand scandalized 19th-century Paris but her voice could not be hushed. She smoked cigars in public, wore male attire, wished to be addressed as "mon frere," and advocated free love in an epoch when men were unconcerned with women's right to physical pleasure. With Alfred, the woman in Sand broke open the cage of the French haute bourgeoisie; he introduced her to desire, passion, and most importantly a love she could not do without no matter how persistently she tried. Unreservedly, she introduced him to herself, a woman made of feeling and courage, a woman who loved him too much. "You taught me to love that way," she tells him. That was enough to disrupt his happy-go-lucky and excessive life forever.

Directed by Diane Kurys (Love After Love & Entre Nous), and whose costumes were made by French couturier Christian Lacroix, the movie glistens in quality and precision, whether that of period interiors, music mood, or supporting performance.

Although Sand had been portrayed before in Judy Davis' 1990 film 'Impromptu' that had explored her love affair with Chopin, 'Les Enfants du Siecle' explores the love that had transformed her life and marked it with an unfogettable moral:

"Love does exist," she confesses in the end. "It's not an illusion. I'm sure of that now. One merely has to recognise it, and be humble before it. We didn't understand it. We parted in the arrogance of youth. We didn't know then what we learnt with time: We only love once with all our soul. Today, I know it. It was him. He was that one time."

But it was too late.

When Passion and Pride Collide...
Diane Kury's sumptuous epic tells the true story of French author George Sand's passionate but brutal affair with poet and dandy Alfred de Musset.

An incredibly romantic and sesual film, Children of the Century follows the pairs relationship more than their lives as authors. Their relationship is presented as a constant stryggle between two behmoths. Binoche Sand is graceful and wise, while Magimel's Musset is possessed with an incredible energy (there might be something to all those Sean Penn comparisons after all). The film follows the lovers to Venice where violence, infidelity and selfishness destroy their relationship.

Kury's film is not particularly interested in the pair as writers, or in the larger literary scene of the time. Instead she recounts a marvellously messy affair in all its glory. Both are seen as selfish, kind and above all proud. The sexual element of their relationship is not shied away from, as Kurys explores how a proto-feminist such as Sand fits into a conventional relationship... Binoche in particular develops Sand with a fine finesse and a calm serenity.

Children of the Century is a fine example of French costume drama and sits well alongside Queen Margot and the Horseman on the Roof, although it's story is not as rousing as those two. However it does not meet to the haunting standard of two heritage classics... Cyrano de Bergerac and Binoche's own Widow of Saint-Pierre...

As a tale of mad, passionate, all consuming amour you cannot miss this movie...

Banal Binoche extravaganza
This film began as a beautiful European historical period piece, in Paris, which lush costumes, gorgeous people, etc. But after an hour, it deteriorated into incredibly boring melodrama with Binoche placed in alternating picturesque European cities and sex scenes. No deep emotions are penetrated, more than many other Binoche vehicles like "Chocolat" and "The Horseman on the Roof". I couldn't wait for it to end -- it's 2 hours seemed like 4. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Filmmaker Diane Kurys examines the bittersweet friendship of two women (Isabelle Huppert and Miou Miou) during post-World War II France in this semi-autobiographical account of her mother and father. The women struggle with their dreams and identities, compromising themselves with marriages that are not very satisfying. They long to own their own boutique, but domestic priorities always seem to cut short their aspirations and their friendship. They are only happy when they are together. However, the husbands struggle with their postwar identities as well, and compromise turns them into angry men. The children, meanwhile, are the quiet victims in all of this. It's a predictable yet moving film with much to offer. --Bill Desowitz ... Read more

Reviews (1)

middling
In this film Isabelle Huppert visits the ruins of Pompeii where it is said "after love is punishment". This is apt since Isabelle’s character, Lola, has terrible luck with men. Her husband is still entangled with his former wife, and her lover is married. Both of these men have children from their non-Lola relationships and both are tied to clinging hysterical females. In comparison, Lola is calm personified, but clearly lacking the manipulative skills to keep a man. Director Diane Kurys’ 1983 Entre Nous, also with Huppert, was praised for it’s feminist treatment of the story of women with boorish husbands. This time around it appears she has taken the opposite view. Lola’s husband is given an Eve Harrington-type secretary, and we are repeatedly told how "stupid" a co-worker’s girlfriend is. And yes, you guessed it - she’s another hysteric. I can’t recall a film directed by a woman, with so many negative portrayals of women. In an attempt to break her writer’s block, novelist Lola keeps a diary from which she reads and creates scenarios, but these play as pure soap opera, and filmed in sepia, no less. The script which Kurys co-wrote also reads like a soap opera though occasionally she comes up with something. When Lola’s lover discovers his wife is having a revenge affair, he stalks her a la Taxi Driver. When Lola and he embrace, her tears are for the end of their affair, but his are for his cuckold. And there is an argument that becomes funny because of Lola’s refusal to participate. Kurys never gives Huppert the opportunities Claude Chabrol does and she is even stingy with closeups, which is a pity since her bob here is very pretty. Kurys tries to flatten Huppert into her mysogynistic universe, ogling her flesh in 2 [love] scenes, and even emphasising her shortness. The one lasting positive image is of a blissfully happy Lola, hugging her lover and caressing him Garbo-like with her chin. It recalls the way Marguerite Gautier nestles the chaise longue in Camille, though Huppert adds a kitty-cat smirk of satisfaction. ... Read more