Children of the Century

Contrary to its title, this is not a movie about children in an unnamed century. Instead this movie is about the love/hate relationship between French writers Alfred Musset and George Sand. They are two souls who have a mutual and affectionate understanding of one another until a voyage to Italy reveals their true nature. Passion, envy, trust, betrayal and forgiveness are all brilliantly encompassed in the relationship between Musset and Sand.

I enoyed this movie, though some may find it dull and slow. You may need to be a die-hard romantic or like well-costumed period dramas to watch this movie. My harshest criticism for this film would be that of it's length and even though I enjoyed the turbulent relationship shown in this film, there were times when I thought that their affair had ended for good only for them to reconcile a few scenes later.

This movie is handsomely photographed with wonderful costumes by Christian LaCroix and most magnificent of all, the actors don't seem like they're acting at all. Juliette Binoche is spectacular, both beauitful and natural in her potrayal of Sand. Benoit Magimel is splendid as Alfred Musset. Don't expect historical accuracy, and if you're a romantic at heart, you will not be disappointed.

If Romanticism, as a movement, can be defined as an "infinite longing" which combines passion and erotic tension with death, despair, and the cycles of nature, then Kurys film portrayal is aptly named and her protagonists--Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand--are indeed children of their century.

The key to understanding the point of this film is to think of it as a painting. It does not give you an insider's view of the relationship between these two literary giants; it does not break down their psychology; and you do not even understand why you, as an audience member, should like either of them. Yet their obsessive love was a monument for the first major artistic movement of the 19th century. Kurys paints them as Delacroix would--in all their lurid color, capturing the details of high emotion without explaining a thing. As painting on film, Les Enfants succeeds as wildly as any Romantic dreamscape and, thus, captures the mood of that era and the sentiment which spawned it more perfectly than 1,000 words on the subject.

I saw this film in French with Spanish subtitles so I had to read very fast! The photography is beautiful. I had not seen either of the principal actors before but I will look for them again. Miss Binoche made George Sand a real person not just an odd woman! The actor who played Alfred de Musset, showed him as charming but weak, very well done.

Being French, I saw this film at its release. I had no idea about what I might find except that Juliette Binoche was in it. I went there alone. I came out in a crowd.

Romanticism isn't what we think it is. This story IS romantic, not because it's a love story, but because it's a Romantics's story. George Sand and Alfred de Musset were two of our greatest writers. Their works were full of hope, of despair, of melancholy and bitterness. They were revolutionaries. This film is all about the atmosphere of that time, all about the fights and ambitions of these young writers who wanted to change the world and find an unclear future.

This film is one of the few that changed my life, not because of the way it was filmed, or the performance of the actors (though they were absolutely fabulous and I'm looking forward to their next films), it changed my perception of life, made me read some Romantic works (by Sand, Musset, Hugo, Lamartine,... and that's only for the French ones) where I found a "translation" of what I feel when I look to the world in front of me.

That's what this film is all about. It's not a film about a past true story, it's about all of us, everyday.

I loved this movie and I don't know to what extent this movie is near to the original story. I have read the life of George Sand and was amazed by her character. A character so tough when it has to do with freedom of doing what one wants. George Sand was one of my best female characters next to Mary Wolstoncroft, Jane Austin, Emmeline Pankhurst and the famous five. Juliette Binoche has played the role magnificently close and made it feel like I was watching the original Sand.

The love story is so beautiful specially the scene when Benoit Magimel sleeps on the street ground under the rain when Sand comes to visit him in her carriage. Waw!... I mean this is a charming scene, it says a lot about the feelings of love.