Leaving (2009)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I was most interested to find out that the female star of Four Weddings and a Funeral speaks fluent French, and has starred in a few films made in France, this was one I had heard about and looked forward to trying. Basically Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a wealthy married woman and mother of two living in the south of France, but her empty bourgeois lifestyle is beginning to depress her, so she returns to working as a physiotherapist. Her doctor husband Samuel (The Interpreter's Yvan Attal) agrees to help Suzanne any way he can, but then she meets Ivan (Pan's Labyrinth's Sergi López), a Spanish ex-con hired to do the building for her new consulting room in the backyard, Suzanne and Ivan are mutually and passionately attracted to each other. After multiple sexual meetings with each other, Suzanne confesses her affair with Ivan to her husband, and promises to give it up, but she cannot actually do it, and finally decides to give up everything to live with Ivan and continue her passion to the fullest. But Samuel will not let go of her, and her daughter reject her, but her son stays connected to her, Suzanne and Ivan find themselves in financial trouble, when her credit card is stopped, she is forced to sell her expensive watch to get money. When their situation gets worse, Suzanne and Ivan resort to extreme measures, stealing paintings and valuables from Samuel's house, only for Ivan to get arrested, and Suzanne tries to convince her husband she was solely responsible for the burglary, only taking what was hers. Suzanne says she will do anything if Ivan is kept out of jail, Samuel tells her if she comes home he will be let free, she agrees to do so, but she is distant with her family, and has to put up with her husband making sexual advances. In the end Suzanne grabs the rifle and shells from the closet and kills Samuel dead in his sleep, she is reunited with Ivan at the ruined house they planned to renovate, they embrace and she sobs hysterically, in the distance a police siren is heard approaching. Also starring Bernard Blancan as Rémi, Aladin Reibel as Dubreuil, Alexandre Vidal as David, Daisy Broom as Marion and Berta Esquirol as Berta. Scott gives a magnetic performance as the bored housewife risking and leaving everything for sexual lust, López as the Spanish handyman and Attal as the unpleasant husband do their parts well also, it is a nice simple story about an affair, with blackmailing and revenge along the way, it may be slightly predictable, but it has terrific camera-work and music, and you certainly want to know how it all plays out, a credible romantic melodrama. Worth watching!

Yes, the acting was superb especially from Thomas who seems to be in every other movie these days. How does she do it? The movie could have failed badly had it turned the focus directly onto the psychological aspects of adultery such as guilt. Instead, it chose indirection by describing everything in terms of money with all the shame and panic and humiliation that comes from the lack of it. The shame of having to peddle your watch to strangers in order to get enough to fill up the car stands in for the shame of having abandoned your family for the sake of wild sex.Half-way through, my wife said that, were it not for the sex scenes, it would be a good flick to show to adolescents as a warning as to what can happen when you abandon your responsibilities and the film ended well in this respect with the sound of police sirens.Now to the really sad part, the reviews most of which shrunk from any kind of moral judgment. What were the Thomas character transgressions? Adultery, theft and murder. And her husband's faults? He was boring. None of the dozen or so reviews I have read were capable of saying that this movie is about a bad woman. So, if your husband is boring, you shoot him in his sleep with a deer rifle and you're a conflicted, complicated, lonely housewife. She was bored. Who could blame her?

"Partir," shown in the U.S. as "Leaving" (2009) was co-written and directed by Catherine Corsini. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Suzanne, a French wife and mother who is bored with her "perfect" life. She is rich, beautiful, and seemingly happily married.However, she decides to do something more than just be idle, so she returns to her earlier profession of physical therapy. Her husband is paying for an office for his wife, which will be adjacent to their home. Although wealthy, he squeezes every Euro out of the building contractor. That causes the contractor to hire a Spanish worker, who will work for non-union wages. Suzanne falls passionately in love with the worker--Ivan--and what happens next makes up the plot of the movie.As someone pointed out on the message board, no one behaves intelligently. When she is desperate for money, Suzanne--despite her education and her elegance and beauty--ends up doing manual labor at the lowest level. (Literally--she's picking vegetables.) Didn't she consider working in a dress shop or as a receptionist if she couldn't find a PT position?Kristin Scott Thomas is English, but she lives in France. She's very convincing as a woman who arrived in France when she was very young, and now is completely French. The movie manages to work because Scott Thomas has so much star power and such a strong screen presence. However, beauty and elegance can only take a movie so far. If you analyze the film carefully, the whole thing falls apart.I saw the movie on DVD, and that worked well for the interpersonal aspects. However, there were several scenes of great natural beauty, which were lost on the small screen. I don't think that Partir is a movie worth seeking out, except if you are dazzled by Kristin Scott Thomas, who is in virtually every scene. However, I think it's somewhat better than the very low IMDb rating would suggest.

This is a movie that stays with you for a long time after viewing. The acting is extraordinary, the attraction between the two main characters palpable, the photography and sceneries beautiful. I really don't see why so much negative criticism is directed toward the plot. Passion has existed since time beginning and this is what this movie is all about, an uncontrollable, all consuming passion, which is made very believable by the wonderful.Kristin Scott Thomas. Sergi López is perfect as the lover, passionate, tender and vulnerable. If you are looking for the reason why Suzanne falls in love with him, those are the main reasons, besides the fact that he is obviously good looking. I enjoyed the movie tremendously. Every scene was essential to the plot, no gratuitous sex scenes here. And the style was elegant, as only the French know how to do.