Simple Passion Reviews
February 22, 2021
It's a shame the tension created by their feverish pas de deux and the torturous aftermath is dissipated by the awful selection of non-diegetic pop songs added to the soundtrack.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
February 11, 2021
It's just as well, then, that Dosch's performance has intriguing shades and details. If you're a fan of intense French dramas, she gives you reason enough to see this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
February 10, 2021
Simple Passion perfectly captures the giddy, heedless foolishness of infatuation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
February 6, 2021
There are painful echoes of Fifty Shades of Grey in the palpable lack of chemistry between Dosch and Polunin, and in the airless plotting about a woman at the mercy of her lover's timetable and her fiery passions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
February 4, 2021
Laetitia Dosch is subtle and exquisite as a divorced Parisian lost in infatuation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
February 4, 2021
Although the pleasures of the flesh are shown with enough erotic power to convince us of Hélène's addiction to them, the anonymity of the lead characters stops the film from truly gripping.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
February 4, 2021
The film's about a chapter we prefer to get out of the way in adolescence; revisited as this kind of helpless mid-life crisis, it's exquisite torture.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
February 3, 2021
As a drama about the complex psychology of self-destructive desire, it's all bit arthouse 101.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
February 3, 2021
It is a pity that Polunin could not have been a little relaxed in the role: but, as I say, his opaque hauteur is rather the point. And Dosch is great.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
February 1, 2021
Arbid delves into female sexual desire with intoxicating abandon, capturing the all-consuming nature of an affair and getting stuck into an experience that's as humiliating as it is exciting and empowering.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
October 1, 2020
Dosch is in her element here, bringing depth to every glance, captured by Pascal Granale not just in the thrust of sex but in more impressionistic interludes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
September 25, 2020
An imperfect but glassily compelling study of obsessive, finally debilitating desire that honors its source with an unblinking female gaze.
September 21, 2020
As remarkable as it is surprising. [Full review in Spanish]
September 21, 2020
A compelling, formally adventurous drama highlighting a superb performance by Laetitia Dosch.
September 11, 2020
It's like Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR without the year.