The French movie Alice et Martin (1998) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Alice and Martin. The film was co-written and directed by André Téchiné.
Juliette Binoche portrays Alice, a professional violinist who lives with Benjamin Sauvagnac, a gay playwright and actor. (Benjamin is played by Mathieu Amalric.) Alexis Loret portrays Martin Sauvagnac, Benjamin's half-brother.
Martin comes from the countryside to Paris, and moves in with Alice and Benjamin. Naturally, he falls in love with Alice. The rest of the plot spins out as a relationship story between Alice and Martin, as the name of the film implies.
Téchiné is a great director. Brioche is a great actor. This should have been a don't-miss movie. Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I think that part of the problem is that Alice is depicted as unsure and dependent. That's not really the way we usually see Juliette Binoche, and she appears unsure and dependent playing that role. Anyway, the magic doesn't happen.
We saw this movie on the small screen, and it worked well. It has a dismal IMDb rating of 6.3. I thought it was somewhat better than that, and rated it 7.
