A Perfect Ending (2012)

Best movie ever!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Just like the protagonist, watching this film for me was an act of experimentation in a genre i'm not particularly familiar with (LGBT). The reviews describe it as a stunning masterpiece of cinema, but i felt compelled to comment simply to redress the balance.TL;DR: this is a sales pitch for the lesbian lifestyle - targeted at the US middle class - attempting to masquerade as a "deep" film.The pretentiousness and disingenuousness are what stand out the most, but simply the most frustrating point of the whole two hours is that it's misses an incredible opportunity to examine the powerful and interesting issues it so nearly touches on: female sexual dysfunction, the moral ambiguity of prostitution, the awkward navigation of sexual fantasy, the family dynamics of terminal diagnosis, and more. It scrapes the 0.1% sludge off a barrel ten miles deep.This is what it *could* have been, if it weren't such a blatant and craven agenda-driven Trojan horse. It doesn't touch on any of these.The message: being a lesbian is awesome, and you should try it if you're a middle class white housewife. It's the solution of all of a woman's problems, and the only route to true and safe sexual experience, which will ultimately heal you from your emotional repression (see the name of the film). Fulfilling your sexual fantasies is a way to cope with your cancer diagnosis, whilst being surrounded by all the terribly abusive masculine influences in your life you never cared about anyway.How do you know it's a sales pitch? Sales only emphasises one side of an equation: the "beneficial" one the salesperson wants you to buy. Journalistic or cinematic integrity demands both sides are examined. There is no downside to the character's choices.Aside from the horrendous cliché around every corner (straight girl's OMG lesbian besties!, sexually abusive stepfather, noble 2nd career escort, cynical brothel madam, lesbian liberation, ungrateful kids etc), the forced acting, the wooden dialogue, the unlikable characters that are impossible to attach to, the endless piano soundtrack covering up bad background noise over slow-mo porn, the faux/feigned/forced sentiment, the sanctimonious message, the erotica laced with feigned "philosophical" therapy talk, and the almost sociopathic disassociation from a central issue as devastating as terminal cancer, the most redeeming thing about this walking advertisement for gay normalcy is it's done with a degree of tasteful sensitivity and got a well-used switcharoo trope that approaches surprise.If you think this is somehow "deep", you clearly must be the type of insincere person this kind of film appeals to, who thinks it means "slow motion shots with piano". It's pure self- indulgent claptrap with a self-involved character from a self-indulgent director trying to sell pink ideology whilst willfully ignoring the challenging issues it could really have bitten into.If you're going to try to extrapolate a "milf" porn scenario into a serious film, at least add some blowback to decisions and/or make your characters remotely human. You want your audience to actually care if your protagonist dies.Go rent "Milk", "Circumstance", or "Boys Don't Cry" instead.

I absolutely LOVED A Perfect Ending. I bought it because I'm a Nicole Conn fan, but was amazed at how quickly I fell in love with these characters. You can actually feel the angst that both Rebecca and Paris are feeling in their individual lives, as well as how much each is longing to be loved. Each woman found it in the most unexpected place, with each other. I love this cast. Obviously, the main characters are both beautiful actresses with impressive acting chops, but I wasn't expecting to love the ancillary characters as much as I did. The husband, the kids...Morgan Fairchild as the Madam with a heart of gold...all of it! As soon as I watched, I couldn't tell people fast enough! I sent a private Facebook message to everyone I knew that appreciated great cinema. I'll continue to spread the word and CANNOT wait to see what's next from this incredible filmmaker!!

Nicole Conn gave us again a masterpiece!!! It's a movie which addresses many facets such as: the prejudice, love between women, the male abuse in marriage, children's distinction between boy and girl, the age differences and sex work. "A Perfect Ending" is above all, a hymn to Love and Nicole found the perfect actresses for the main roles. The chemistry between Barbara Niven and Jessica Clark is outstanding! Rebecca is Barbara's role lifetime, with an absolutely amazing courage! Jessica surprised everyone in her first feature film, really talented actress! The soundtrack, especially the music The Perfect Pavane by Kathy Fowler, is superb! Thank you Nicole for this gift to the world! We are looking forward for your next creations!

I love this movie for all the reasons other viewers have given. After seeing this movie, I am a forever fan of both Barbara Niven and Jessica Clark. I can name only a few on-screen couples that can take your breath away with their chemistry -- they are in that small group. Add to that, their very moving performances filled with touches of brilliance and you find yourself totally swept up into their love story to the point of actually believing they could be a real couple. THAT IS RARE. They totally sold it. That is all we can ask of actors. So Niven and Clark did their part (their best) for this movie. And I thank them from the bottom of my heart because I now have a treasure to revisit, over and over, because of them. I wish the same could be said about the writer and director, Nicole Conn. She had gold in the palm of her hand and all she had to do was shape it and mold it into the greatest same-sex movie of all time. Instead, she chose to make this movie into an artsy showcase of her "creativity" while totally disregarding the feelings of the viewers. If she hadn't wasted so much time on close-ups of focused and out of focus objects, Paris in the white room suffering from guilt, Rebecca and Mason fighting over his molesting her daughter (which was completely pointless), Paris working on her art, Paris at work being with men as a hooker (disgusting and unnecessary), Paris having sex with her boyfriend/husband (also unnecessary), Ms. Conn could have, instead, spent that precious time developing the strong bond between Rebecca and Paris with their own words describing the growing love, passion, respect and need for each other. Alas, she didn't. She chose to leave much of that to the viewers' imagination while forming a bottomless pit of questions. Like, why didn't she show Paris informing Rebecca that she had left the service? (Rebecca's greatest dream for her.) Why didn't Paris ever say "I love you" to Rebecca even though we all knew she did. Why were the couple's words to each other during their love scenes drowned out by music or kept so low in sound that no one could hear them. And here's the biggest why of all. WHY make the ending the way it was made? To me, that is NOT a perfect ending. That is a terrible ending. And it could have been so easily avoided by changing the ending to one of pure joy for our beloved couple. Rebecca, right there by Paris' side, at the gallery showing of Paris' art. Both beaming happily, holding hands for all the world to see. Imagine the power that Nicole Conn possessed while writing this story. She could have chosen a more positive, more powerful message with this type of ending. Love triumphs over all. Any love. Even same-sex love. Instead, viewers who genuinely love this movie cannot watch it over and over to enjoy the love and the passion displayed between the beautiful leads without feeling the dark cloud hovering overhead. And that's not fair. There should have at least been two different endings made for the viewers to pick from. That would have been the fairest. Also, at the beginning of every "bonus scene" that was cut from the final film version that was released (available on the DVD version), Nicole Conn's voice can be heard saying how she hated to lose that particular scene but it had to be cut due to limited time. My advice to her: Cut, instead, all the artsy close-ups, all the unnecessary junk you put in and you would have had plenty of time for those beautiful extra scenes of Rebecca and Paris being together and lighting up the screen!