The English Patient | pinartarhan.com

Leaving starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Yvan Attal & Sergi López. Despite its characters, a strangely watchable film. Image via sinemag.com

Leaving Plot Summary: (Original Name: Partir)

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an English woman who has lived in France for a very long time. She has married the French doctor Samuel (Yvan Attal), left her profession (reflexology), had two kids and lived a suburban life.

When she decides to go back to work many years later, her husband agrees to build her an office in their house. They hire a small team of workers, and Suzanne gets along especially well with the originally Spanish Ivan (Sergi López). When circumstances, and their mutual easy-going nature, make them spend time together, an affair inevitably pursues. But when Suzanne realizes that she loves Ivan enough to leave her husband, she definitely wasn’t prepared for his reaction.

The bad thing about leaving your popular and well-connected husband for a penniless ex-con is that he can make sure you suffer from poverty. Suzanne is determined to win this war, but can a war like this have any winners at all?

Cons

Did my plot summary sound a tad dramatic? Well, the movie is a drama. Well, it is a romantic drama to be exact, but it is dramatic parts are more effective, as unfortunately for the most part, the romance was lost on me. Here is why:

1) The Other Guy is So Not Sexy! : I don’t want to sound superficial here but I can’t for the life of me can’t see what she saw in Ivan. Yes, as it turned out he was a really nice guy (well, apart from being an ex-con and having no problems sleeping with a married woman), but we didn’t really know that until after she left her husband to be with him.

Fun Note:

I just read this cruel review on Larry Crowne where the reviewer called it a painful experience watching an older Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks. While Tom Hanks was never especially cute, his Larry Crowne self is still a lot more appealing than Ivan. And that is saying something.

2) The Lover Won’ t Be A ” Lover” for Decades!: Give Ivan 20 years of marriage and we’ll see if he is that sexually and emotionally intense afterwards. Yes, her husband seemed like a tool but really, has she lived with Ivan for 20 years?

3) Cheating is not romantic! I am a romantic who is intrinsically against cheating. I am more of a leave- your-spouse-first-and have-sex-with-somebody-else later kinda gal.

Still, I have been known to suck it up when the lover was awesome and the husband was an jerk. For instance? Revenge with Kevin Costner.

However, here, the lover was anything but awesome. He wasn’t even remotely intriguing. Or sexy. Or …anything.

4) The Protagonist Can Give Feminists a Heart Attack! People gave Twilight hell because they thought the female protagonist was just against everything feminism stood for. Bascially, they were judging a17-year-old character for falling for a pretty rich & handsome dude who will live forever, and who will always be hot? Who will risk his life to save her? Hell, she might be emotionally dependent on the guy, but it is not like she stayed at home for 20 years, didn’t make or save a penny on her own, jumped the bones of the first non-attractive stranger, and left her obsessed husband to be with this stranger?

If we are talking anti-feminist, you need to condemn Suzanne way before Bella.

5) 3 Stupid Characters: Oh, and the characters are beyond weird and stupid. No one in the film seems to possess half a brain cell.

Why the hell did I enjoy watching it, then?

Because despite all its cons, the movie is entirely watchable. You gotta hand it to the director who shot a movie in French, evolving around weird characters. And you have to slap the actors on the back who make you curious even though you don’t respect/admire/like any of the characters!

Leaving has interesting scenery, an an OK pace. It is currently rated 6.3 on IMDB, and it has a lot to do with Scott’s terrific acting and charm along with the director’s.

Should you Watch It?

I won’t lie to you. The movie is not to be watched for eye-candy, or a sexy love story. It is more about the lengths a husband will go to make his wife’s and her lover’s lives miserable, and the incredulous lengths the wife will go to defy him, and secure her lover’s freedom.

Watch it at your own peril. You might very well hate or enjoy the experience. But all you want is a passionate love/sex story with pretty (or at least prettier) leads, you might want to see:

The English Patient. This movie is incredible. It has a beautifully told story where we get love, sex, passion, obsession, infatuation, war, compassion, betrayal and immense loyalty all at the same time. The movie has 9 Oscars, the man being cheated on is Colin Firth, the cheater is a much younger Kristin Scott Thomas and the other man is the highly charismatic and intense Ralph Fiennes.

Revenge. The cheaters are Kevin Costner and Madeleine Stowe. The husband is Anthony Quinn. The director is Tony Scott. Aren’t you curious already? From 1990.

The Scarlet Letter. In all defense, Demi Moore thinks her husband is dead when she was sleeping with Gary Oldman. Their problem was that it was the 17th century, the dude was a psycho and Gary Oldman was a reverend…

Verdict:

Watchable and likable, but not likely to leave a lasting impression, other than how stupid all the main characters were.

P.S. If you really want to watch a French movie where Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant and the story is truly heart-breaking, watch I’ve loved you for so long. If you want a movie about cheating where you will lust after and/or empathize with the leads, watch one of the 3 movies above.

The English Patient (1996)

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Naveen Andrews, William Dafoe, Colin Firth

The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche

BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!

Do not condemn me morally corrupt before reading all of the post. I am a hopeless romantic in general and value loyalty above all in relationships. But yet there are movies depicting a story so well, and so impressively that you find yourself rooting for characters that you could normally despise. Or, sometimes the person who is being cheated on is such a bastard-pardon the language- and the potential lover so dreamy, you actually can not wait for your lead to start an affair. The latter is the case in Revenge and in The Scarlet Letter. However The English Patient, you can’t help but like the husband from the beginning. It belongs to the first category…So let’s get to the story,shall we?

WWII. Julitte Binoche plays a nurse who is taking care of a badly burnt patient (Ralph Fiennes). He is in tremendous pain. We get to see what happened to him through flashbacks: a story about love,passion and obsession beyond anything and everything else that engrosses us. Did it sound too much like a tagline? Sorry, how his tale made me feel…

Ralph Fiennes, The English Patient. The desert.

The patient is Count Laszlo de Almasy, a Hungarian map maker. Along with other explorers he is working at the Sahara Desert.Among the people he met are a British couple Katharine and Geoffrey-played by Scott-Thomas and Colin Firth. Almasy is instantly taken by Katharine and he actually treats her badly as he becomes more attracted. He is also as opposite to her husband as one can get. Count is distant,quite,mysterious and ranges from overly polite to excessively rude. Her husband is polite,friendly,nice,loving and modern.So much that when he needs to leave for a mission for a couple of days, he is trusting enough to leave his wife among a bunch of men on a desert.Despite Almasy’s suggestions that he shouldn’t.Witnessing this,Katharine is sure that this weird man despises her. But during the time her husband is away, she sees through Almasy. Discovering the inside of caves together and being stranded on the desert during a sandstorm change things. Also, Katharine gets to read his journal where he has put his fascination with her into words.

The connection and attraction are undeniable. When they get back, they have sex. Although it seems more about obsession and lust, the intimacy afterwards is sincere and affectionate.

The second time also doesn’t seem romantic at all. It is quick,impatient and rough. But then there are these moments where they look like high school kids in love.

And then she finishes off. She is feeling guilty already. He doesn’t take it well. He gets into a jealous fit. She also doesn’t know but her husband actually did see them together. The way Ralph Fiennes can turn Almasy’s charm on and off is very impressive. He gives you many reasons to not to sympathize with his character. He has an affair with a married woman, and seems to have a clear conscience about it.But then it all changes,at least in my eyes…

Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient

The husband tried to crash his plane into Almasy.Almasy dodges the attack,

but Geoffrey is already dead. And what’s worse is that Katharine was also on the plane and she is severely injured. As Almsay carries her towards the cave, we see his painful expression. When Katharine says that she has always loved him, he is in tears. And well so is most of the audience. This is the second and only other film I got teary. You feel his pain. You feel his love. The questions you might have had about the nature of their relationship and their feelings are gone. The husband you felt so sorry for, has now become the guy who (almost) kill his wife. And the guy who seemed more obsessed than in love, takes care of her in the cave on the desert. He decided to do impossible. He walks through the desert for three days, so that he might get to take her out of there and help her survive. But he faces all sorts of misfortune, does everything he can and gets back. Bu when he arrives, she is gone. This time he carries her out of the cave,tears of desperation flowing. The expression on his face is so painful and so powerful that it has stayed with me.And I saw the movie when it first came out…

Of course it is wrong to cheat on your husband. Of course it is dispeakable to cheat on the guy you willingly married and have been friends with and who has treated you just right. But then it is worse to try to kill your wife, yourself and try to kill her lover in the process as well. You wish that Almasy could have gotten a happy ending. His love for Katharine is so strong that you just feel that kind of love is above any rule or principle.And I would probably prefer to love and be loved like , over living a long,yet passionless life.

Of course there is more to the movie than the adultery.

The scenery is amazing. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella has done an amazing job. The movie has won 9 Oscars and I disagree with none. I think Ralph should have gotten best actor. His performance is amazing both as the healthy and horribly burnt Almasy. This is the first time I saw Naveen Andrews-his pre-Lost era- who plays the love interest of Hanna-the nurse Binoche is playing. Dafoe’s conflicted and interesting character adds mystery. This is the movie that made me a compulsive Ralph fan. Colin Firth plays the plain yet loving husband wonderfully- so wonderfully that I had no idea I would later consider him as a hearthrob, starting with his role in Bridget Jones. Is this a movie to be enjoyed by everyone? No. It might seem too long or like a sentimental piece of crap. It might seem just OK or like a master piece. You just have to check it out if you haven’t seen it already and decide for yourselves.

Buy The English Patient

Naveen Andrews as Kip,pre-Sayid/Lost era

William Dafoe in The English Patient — William Dafoe

Leaving starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Yvan Attal & Sergi Lopez

When adultery is okay,part 2: The English Patient