Despite an off-putting premise, this is a sumptuous drama boasting substance as well as spectacle.
Les Destinees (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 49
Fresh: 30
Rotten:19
Average Rating: 6/10
Consensus: The long, epic Les Destinees is too slow and tedious to justify its running time.
Theatrical Release:Apr 5, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: From Olivier Assayas, the director of IRMA VEP and L'EAU FROIDE, comes LES DESTINÉES, a tender and sophisticated period piece starring Emmanuelle Béart and Charles Berling. Based on the novel by... From Olivier Assayas, the director of IRMA VEP and L'EAU FROIDE, comes LES DESTINÉES, a tender and sophisticated period piece starring Emmanuelle Béart and Charles Berling. Based on the novel by Jacques Chardonne, this epic film takes place in France from 1900 to the '30s. Focusing on the life of Jean Barnery (Berling), the film is divided into three 60-minute chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to Jean's first wife Nathalie (an icey Isabelle Huppert) and the scandal that causes him to abandon his career as a pastor in the insular village of Barbizac. The next chapter centers on his second wife and true love, Pauline (Béart), for whom he gives up his family fortune so that they may live a simple romantic life in a chalet nestled in the Swiss Alps. The third chapter, which explores with philosophical curiosity the effects of war and economy on community and industry, focuses firmly on Jean's primary love, porcelain. With beautiful period costumes, touching dialogue, and a convincing display of the passage of time, LES DESTINÉES features some unforgettable sequences. At a Barbizac ball, the camera lingers in the chandelier as dancers swirl in a dizzying waltz below. In the Swiss Alps, Jean paddles an exquisite wooden rowboat as Pauline swims in azure water. Later, the film depicts the Limoges porcelain factory in detail with its mammoth coal-fueled kilns offset by skilled artisans carefully painting the fresh china. In addition, the Barbizac brandy business, managed by Pauline's uncle (Olivier Perrier), gets a good amount of play, with the amber liquor being ladled out for tasting during its lengthy aging process. This film was included in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2002 festival organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City. [More]
Starring: Emmanuelle Beart, Charles Berling, Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Perrier
Starring: Emmanuelle Beart, Charles Berling, Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Perrier, Julie Depardieu, Andre Marcon, Dominique Reymond, Alexandra London
Director: Olivier Assayas
Director: Olivier Assayas
Screenwriter: Olivier Assayas, Jacques Fieschi
Producer: Bruno Pesery
Composer: Guillaume Lekeu
Studio: Winstar
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Reviews for Les Destinees
A massive undertaking and an accomplished piece of filmmaking in a solid tradition of intelligent, meticulous literary adaptations.
Assayas is masterful in using offscreen sounds to conjure up a novelistic sense of milieu and in handling various ceremonies, and the film's lush texture explains why he called it his anti-Dogma film.
We're kept intrigued by the characters and where they're heading, and the gorgeous cinematography and production design help us submerge ourselves in their world.
It is...very good at showing how people can and do change over the course of a lifetime, how faith can be abandoned and then picked up, how love can ebb and mutate.
An exhausting family drama about a porcelain empire and just as hard a flick as its subject matter.
More than a few of us would show up for the chance to see and hear Huppert and Beart read from the Limoges telephone directory. Assayas can count himself lucky for that.
Opens at a funeral, ends on the protagonist's death bed and doesn't get much livelier in the three hours in between.
Gorgeous to look at but insufferably tedious and turgid...a curiously constricted epic.
The movie is relentlessly gorgeous, and brims over with color, light and movement like a room-filling Monet canvas.
Death awaits us all, but Assayas, with a humanist's generosity, offers his characters the greatest gift art can give: immortality.
Rich in detail, gorgeously shot and beautifully acted, Les Destinees is, in its quiet, epic way, daring, inventive and refreshingly unusual.
No one is better at putting modern urban life under the microscope than French director Olivier Assayas.
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