This so powerful drama should have deserved a more talented director than the above mentioned. For a man who lied all along his life to his families and who kills them all, the feeling and narrative chosen by the director fails.
From the start, she depicts this psychotic man as psychotic and that's a gross error: he fooled his families: her wife, parents, friends didn't see anything for years.
Another failure is to mix the deceiving with the murders. All the crescendo of his madness is killed from the beginning. She even writes the final on the beginning credits. In a way, she seems afraid of taking the heart of the subject, of going down into his darkness.
Then, the casting of Devos as his mistress is stupid in so far as his wife is Geraldine. The opposite should have been better.
At last, Badalamenti gives her a wonderful score and she under-use it.
What's left so? A moving Geraldine as a poor and lost wife, a frightening Auteuil who should have been like this only at the end.
In a way, you can understand why Kubrick or Coppola are really masters because those ones have really transcended the madness.
From the start, she depicts this psychotic man as psychotic and that's a gross error: he fooled his families: her wife, parents, friends didn't see anything for years.
Another failure is to mix the deceiving with the murders. All the crescendo of his madness is killed from the beginning. She even writes the final on the beginning credits. In a way, she seems afraid of taking the heart of the subject, of going down into his darkness.
Then, the casting of Devos as his mistress is stupid in so far as his wife is Geraldine. The opposite should have been better.
At last, Badalamenti gives her a wonderful score and she under-use it.
What's left so? A moving Geraldine as a poor and lost wife, a frightening Auteuil who should have been like this only at the end.
In a way, you can understand why Kubrick or Coppola are really masters because those ones have really transcended the madness.