Before the Winter Chill (2013)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This film has many fine elements, but suffers from the same ennui as the couple it portrays. I picked this up at my library, and knew immediately I had seen it before, but couldn't remember the end, and had to ride the "fast forward" to get through it! It didn't get better with a second viewing! A bored neurosurgeon "hits a rough patch" with his trophy wife, who sublimates her loneliness with her trophy home and garden! It reminds me of a flaccid remake of Haneke's "Cache", with Auteuil reprising his role as the stone-walling husband, who is smitten by a young Moroccan woman, who may be stalking him with roses instead of surveillance! Kristin Scott Thomas plays the long-suffering wife, instead of Juliette Binoche.The film also has a couple of disparate elements that could easily have been cut, mainly Lucie's psychotic sister, and a Polish patient's Holocast survival story.This is a fine distraction, if you have nothing else to watch!

small domestic scenes from a family's every day life. a meeting. and image of a profound crisis. a film who could have different definitions. thriller, crime, art film, psychological. but who remains admirable work for the impeccable performance of Kristin Scott Thomas and Daniel Auteuil. for the image of reality beyond the words. for a form of delicacy in define the events like a painting in water colors. a film about values and about fear to lost sense of life. a film who is really seductive not exactly for story but for details. the last scene is a good example. not different by many films with similar theme, it is really beautiful for the doses of drama and for the inspired use of silence. a film about a family. its crisis. and the hope.

I watched it to complete Leila's filmography but this movie is so far her worst participation. It's not that she's bad because for one time she acts beyond her roots but this movie is just meaningless. It collects all the same, old, abused and boring clichés of French drama as it's about the hollow life of a bourgeois couple: we have their total traits: the housewife, the prestigious doctor husband, the tennis matches, the opera, the on shoulders pull, the successful kids and even if they got all this, they feel empty, they are unable to communicate and they want to add fire to their « poor » life. Sure, every body shares this spleen for a perfect life, a life when dreams come true but on the other hand, i really don't care about the bed stories of the bourgeois. It's all the more painful here that practically all the scenes are totally useless as the characters sits, walks, drives alone and in the silence ! Maybe some appreciate this but sorry I skip it

Daniel Auteuil plays a doctor and Kristin Scott Thomas plays his wife. They lead a rather secluded, rather upper-class existence, in a big house, with a very big garden. He works long hours, she does not. He starts getting flowers sent to him, and who is sending them and why, is the central mystery of the film.This is a slow film, a very, very, slow film. It starts off slowly with domestic scenes and only picks up very slowly. We are unsure about the central mystery. Different indications suggest different answers and different roads to go down.Around half-way through the film is an unexpected scene which seem to jar with the rest of the film. It is not the most important scene in the film. However it does introduce an important theme. Although having said this, it does not introduce a development in the plot. As such then, do not expect the little scene to have any greater significance than it has. Do not expect anything more.Film is rather like real-life. Everyday domestic matters feature strongly in the film. Accidents can happen, mistakes can be made, situations can be misunderstood.The fragility of life is a central theme of the film. So too are personal circumstances and change of circumstances. Film is about relationships, lies, lives and loves. There is passion but it is very pent-up.It is a slow film, a little dark, with a few brief life-enhancing moments.Tip: Opera buffs may understand a mistake. 8/10.