From the Land of the Moon (2017)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Brilliant and touching

Boring

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I absolutely loved this film, French films are masters at this type of art. The longing for love the unknown forbidden fruit. Not wanting it yet finding it out of the blue, again metaphorical substances, her pain is real, the stone in her body is real, not attention seeking as her mother would say. Just as painful as her yearning for love, to be loved, to give love, naive, curious... The parents strict in many ways we do not know as to what she went through as a young child, but it forms and shapes her womanhood. Her mind in turmoil, visions, fantasies that are alive as daylight. Twists and turns in the film that left me totally glued as to what is going on with this creature, this beauty, these consequences that are occurring all the time, her loveless marriage, her son... It's the passion of love, lasting a mere moment in a lifetime, and ending so abruptly. To reconcile with herself, in the end finding who she is, finding her inner peace...she is in reality a part of most of mankind.

So many negative reviews, esp the Metacritic reviews! What movie were they watching? Guess it is a love/hate kind of movie.Tour de force acting by all. This could have easily turned melodramatic in other hands, esp with Gabrielle's state of mind, but Marion Cotillard's acting skills worked a wonder, as did Nicole Garcia's directing. A beautiful, if melancholic, love story. Gorgeous locations and photography, in the Alps and by the sea. The sound was spectacular and nominated for a Cesar award. It seemed like the ambiance was recorded while filming, instead of the usual Foley artists coming in to re-create the sound later. I think they did Foley some things, like footsteps, but the important scenes were recorded live. That is so rare; I felt like I was there, as I was when younger. If I am wrong, then outstanding Foley work! The music was perfect for the mood. Wow, I didn't even realize it was so long. It never felt like it. Sparse dialog and much of the film is done via feelings. When that is done so well it is truly a treat not many can pull off. Be sure and catch all the dialog, though, or you may not get it. I tried to guess what 'twist' could possibly happen, as I had read some reviews and knew there was one, but I was wrong (although mine was a good one!). It is rare to be fooled by a film these days! I feel strangely uplifted just now after watching this film, for some odd reason. Perhaps it is that I feel like I have just had a trip to Europe, or I was so immersed it was truly an escape and a journey. Enjoy!

I watched this at home on DVD from my local library. My wife skipped, she doesn't enjoy reading subtitles. It is mostly in French and I watched it with English subtitles.I got the movie mainly because it features Marion Cotillard. She is a lovely lady and one of the best actresses of the current generation. Here she is Gabrielle, part of a farming family in France that includes her dad and mom, plus a younger sister. We see that she was difficult growing up, what some may call "mean." And also fixated on nudity and sex. Looking like she might never marry, her parents made a deal with one of the workers, a Mr. Rabascal, if he would marry her then they would help set him up with his own masonry business. He agrees, Gabrielle eventually goes along, but she tells him directly that she will never love him and they will not have husband-wife relations. In her magnanimity she tells him she doesn't mind if he goes into the city to hire a prostitute.I will not say much more except to say it is mainly a character study of Gabrielle, how she deals with her difficult personality, in the end trying to achieve some happiness with her husband and son who has a gift for playing the piano.Marion Cotillard is superb.

Correct me if I'm wrong. This could be the first major film in which a grand passion starts with kidney stones. (Full disclosure: None of my three episodes went that way — but then none were spent at a posh French rural spa. Mind, one was in Paris.)The original French title is more revealing: The Sickness of the Stone. The film is about the affliction of stoniness — but that of the heart (turn left at the kidney). The central characters suffer from different forms of this inability to feel and to express true emotion. The central case is Gabrielle, who didn't learn emotions or their expression from her cold, practical mother. But her dull rural life nourished a rich hunger for fantasy, especially of the romantic persuasion. So powerful is her imaginative drive that it prevents her development of a real-life love. The English title — From the Land of the Moon — refers to her preference of her dream-world over reality in human connection. She is a moony dreamer, a "lunatic" in that original sense.Her first case is her schoolgirl crush on her literature tutor. She's so in love with the idea of being in love that — with no encouragement — she imagines a full-blown passion with that happily married older man. Her madness scares her mother into marrying her off to a Spanish bricklayer Jose. Gabrielle vows never to love him. He doesn't love her at the start of their marriage. Whether out of curiosity or good housekeeping, she eventually agrees to give him sex for what he would pay the prostitute. Then the kidney stones kick in. What begins as periodic cramps eventually causes a miscarriage. At Jose's insistence she retreats for treatment to a lavish country spa. There she continues her compulsive isolation — save her connection to a serving girl — until she meets and falls for Andre Sauvage. He lost a kidney in the Indochina war and suffers pained and drugged in his room alone. As his surname suggests, their eruptive passion does an end-around on the niceties of civilization and the sacrament of marriage. Or does it? A key scene in Gabrielle's imagined life plays out so persuasive that Jose's eventual revelation brings her — and us — thudding back to reality. Her men provide a key contrast in the theme of stoniness. Dream-man Andre (quite literally, at that) comes across as a man off intense emotion. But the wear has paralyzed him emotionally, rendering him unable to respond to the woman he might have loved "in another lifetime." In the spa for his missing kidney, Andre is another victim of emotional stoniness. From his experience in the Spanish civil war Jose suffered deracination, not as serious as the renal ruin but significant. It leaves him silent, withdrawn, private. His inexpressiveness seems healthy compared to his wife's florid fantasy. Unlike Andre, he can fully respond to Gabrielle, coming to love her through their shared life and even her suffering. He shows gallantry when he first walks away from her initial rejection. When he learns of her love for Andre, he respects her enough to allow her illusion to sustain her. Jose's reticent manner may suggest a coldness but he's the healthiest character in the film. He is a man of feeling not flash. Thanks to his practical engagement with the world and his growing emotional commitment, he ultimately gives Gabrielle the chance to find fulfilment here on earth. The last shot has them looking down on his village, his house, emphasizing her shift away from the moon. Indeed, Jose's character promises to sustain that marriage even better than the simpler, apparently happy marriage of Gabrielle's sister, who threatens to leave her husband's abandonment.