The Widow of Saint-Pierre

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......this movie setting made me cold. The howling winds, the deep snows that go on and The Widow Of St. Pierre  on forever. No wonder the characters were all so complicated and intense. It 's the deep cold and heavy snows that they are all subjected to. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.Now that we have the movie setting down, this movie is lush, and wonderful and deeply sad all at the same time. D. Auteil, is charming and handsome, so in love with his wife. He is kind and sensible. J. Binoche, is as always a lovely, charming actress. One can really feel her pain and desire to keep a guilty man from prison and far away from execution. She is lovely in this film. Her sweet smile and deep feelings, resonate on screen as they do in all the films I have watched of hers. Similar, in some ways to the English Patient, but different, falling for another lost soul. Trying to keep another character alive and free from harm, a no win situation, a lost cause, with tons and tons of snow, what could be better?Ms. Binoche, battles both terrible weather and a guilty man who is self destructive, ignorant and careless. He wants to die, she does all she can to save him....just a great performance form the entire cast. This is a very romantic film, extremely passionate and deeply moving.

Juliette Binoche (Academy Award winner for "The English Patient") stars in this quirky French movie (108 minutes) from 2000. As the wife of an army captain on a small French Island in the 1850s, Binoche's forward-thinking character tries to redeem a condemned murderer who sits in jail awaiting shipment of a "widow" or guillotine, with the collusion of her equally forward-thinking husband. Following the European penchant to show people doing ordinary things and let the audience figure them out, the film takes some time to get going, as it's hard to follow character motivations and the context of early scenes. But once a viewer gets used to the whimsical and offbeat style, which is nevertheless subdued, the story begins to get pretty good. Unlike "Amelie," nothing is overdone here, and the actors weave a believable emotional tapestry.While not a great film, it's a good one, and excellent performances lend great energy to a threadbare plot. Raw human emotion and chemistry between the leads is key to its success. Binoche is expressively brilliant as the independent-minded wife, but is delightfully matched scene-for-scene by the actor playing her morally upstanding but rebellious husband, whose desire to shake up the Second Republic status quo makes him a believable mate for this woman. The actor playing the condemned convict is also good in capturing the simplicity of a fisherman, evoking a fatalistic acceptance of his destiny that mirrors that of the good captain.The biggest flaw in this movie is that it stretches believability and drags along in parts. As Binoche befriends the convict and spends time with him alone, and the captain lets the convict have liberty of the island, it's hard to believe that anyone even in 1850 would trust a murderer to this extent. And the prisoner himself, inscrutable in the levels of his remorse and maturity, doesn't seem to experience any real inner conflict or real temptation to escape when given the chance. As a result, many of the "redemptive" scenes of the convict interacting with villagers feel predictable and flat, not to mention repetitive. Fortunately, the captain's ongoing conflict with his superiors eventually builds to an excellent climax, allowing for the film to achieve a memorable finish. There are enough good scenes to carry this one.The DVD has a few extras, but nothing particularly memorable. While the film lightly touches on moral issues, there is only a tenuous religious connection, and very little moralizing. A Catholic priest appears briefly to conduct a wedding in prison, but the film otherwise overlooks the questions of religious ethics and imagery which doubtless suffused 19th century France. The moral principles of the protagonists here seem to rest on deeper and more implicitly Catholic grounds, if they may be said to be religious at all.

I love this movie (and Juliette Binoche in it but then again I love Juliette Binoche in almost anything she stars in) I'm just now trying to get some more of her movies to collect..I also recently got Children Of The Century and my next one is to get The Horseman On The Roof and then check out some of her other dvds and blu ray's what I like about this is the totally human aspect about this...she is the (I think Chief of Police's wife?) and she is so kind to this prisoner and she doesn't have to be at all...but she tries to give him a chance...I think that's what I like most about the story

First of all let me say when I hear "Patrice Leconte" I think about"Ridicule", which to me was one of the best films I've ever seen, so Iam biased for the director. That being said, I hardly recognized hiswork here. The characters were cold, their emotions either over the top(Pauline/Madame La), subdued to extremes (Jean, the captain) or simplyidealized (Ariel Neel Auguste). What I liked most about this film isthe way that "traditional societies" are depicted.Besides the beautiful lighting (the scenes at the stables, with thesnow and the sea) and correct music (when the captain listens to violinmusic, there's a dissonant background melody, hinting at what will comenext subtly) I felt common sense was missing from the story from thestart, with such unusual circumstances of a captain taking for a victimjust because... he loved his wife so much? But how could he not realizehe was undermining his position in a traditional society?I agree with the IMDb reviewer "rps-2" that it's a "morality tale" anda melodrama (all things surrounding the famous guillotine are tart andrepetitive). I think that makes its "point" ("yet another plea againstdeath penalty") fade in the fog of the plot. The Governor's last sceneis another case in point.Overall... I liked having watched it. But I'd never buy it!PS: Try to watch it on a big wide screen, the landscapes are probablylost on a 21' TV screen like the one I saw it.

I so enjoyed this DVD. It arrived promptly and was as described by the seller. I will definitely order from this vendor again!

c'était un cadeau d'anniversaire.J'avais vu ce film au cinéma et je crois que j'étais passée à côté.C'est très beau film sur le courage.

My five stars go to many beautiful images of a God's forgotten island and to the story from beginning to the very end. As for the issues involved in the plot the film is as actual today as back in 1850, perhaps only more disguised today. Tyranic powers can not stand be defied be that the power of a state or an island's governor. Nowadays perhaps we would not find two men standing up to the consequences of their acts and I believe both would have flown away as they had the oportunity of doing, but story happened 150 years ago… Image and sound of DVD quite good.

Très bon film se déroulant dans une région peu exploitée jusqu'ici au cinéma. Binocheet Auteuil fantastiques.

Widow of St-Pierre The quality of the DVD was excellent, and the DVD story, visuals and acting are superb. Juliette Binoche's films are always worth watching. Widow of St-Pierre

It felt like a film version of a novel, going through the scenes, and losing the believability that a novel can have. The dialogue is a little stilted. The film failed to draw me in as I hoped. But my wife was still tearful at the end, so it can't be that bad.