Ok she's nuts we got that message after 10 minutes already... Nicely photographed and fine performances from the lead actors but that's about it.

Another fine effort from Nicole Garcia, reminiscent of another bitter-sweet movie I also enjoyed, Philip Lioret's Mademoiselle. Both films feature a married wife and mother spotting something that instantly transports them back to a time they encountered love. Nicole Garcia, consciously or not, includes a lovely in-joke; Tchaikovsky's June Barcarolle is a key element in the movie, played initially by Gabrielle's lover and again, years later, by her son. Sigmund Romberg composed several operettas in the 1920s and 30s and cheerfully admitted to 'borrowing' from the classics; his song Lover Come Back To Me, utilised thirteen notes of June Barcarolle in the Release, under the words 'I remember ev'ry little thing you used to do' and then, four notes later 'ev'ry road I walked along, I walked along with you', and Gabrielle writes dozens of unanswered letters to her lover begging him to come back to her. Although everyone turns in a fine performance the film is lifted a notch by the exceptional acting of Marion Cotillard and equally outstanding direction of Nicole Garcia. Not to be missed.

French actress/director Nicole Garcia (Going Away, Little Lilli, Place Vendôme, A View of Love) has transformed Sardinian author Milena Agus' novel 'Mal di pietre' ('disease of kidney stones'),with the assistance of Natalie Carter and Jacques Fieschi, into a staggeringly creative and hauntingly beautiful film that deals with passion and deep seated imagination. It is another showcase for the brilliant actress Marion Cotillard.

Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard) comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José (Alex Brendemühl),an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in Switzerland to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel),a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Gabrielle is released from the spa, pregnant and convinced André is the father, and the child Marc develops into a fine concert pianist. But even the most beautiful of love affairs can be altered by a mind in need of guidance and the story ends with surprising changes that make us realize we have been a part of Gabrielle's insanity.

Beautifully filmed and rich in fine acting, this is a quiet film that seeps into our psyche as we feel the vagaries of a tenuously intact mind. A brilliant film. Grady Harp, July 17