Product Description

Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 08/12/2003 Run time: 174 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30569 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 2002-10-22
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 180 minutes

Amazon.com
This sumptuous film follows the story of a marriage caught in the turmoil of social change. The beautiful Emmanuelle Béart portrays Pauline, wife of the heir to a prosperous porcelain industry. In 1900, when first she meets her future husband, Jean Barnery (Charles Berling), he's a Protestant minister unhappily married to another woman (Isabelle Huppert). After a scandalous divorce, Jean and Pauline marry and move to Switzerland, where they live a briefly idyllic existence, but Jean is drawn back into the family business, which is rocked by the rise of unions, the brutality of World War I, and the economic depression that followed. Throughout, Pauline fights to retain some semblance of their original love. Les Destinées manages to be both intimate and epic, every scene built from carefully observed details in setting and psychology. In the end, the portrait of an enduring marriage is richly affecting. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
The air is soft, and everyone speaks in clipped tones in this sumptuous yet relaxed French epic that begins in 1900 and traces the interlocked affairs of two large haut-bourgeois Protestant families, one of which controls a cognac company in the Charente section of France, and the other a porcelain factory in Limoges. The hero, Jean Barnery (Charles Berling), an intense, fine-grained young man, who is a minister in the fictional town of Barbizac, dismisses the wife he doesn't love (Isabelle Huppert) and drops out of the ministry in shame, only to fall in love with the ravishing young Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart). Unlike such comparable family epics as Visconti's "The Leopard" and Bertolucci's "1900," the movie is unemphatic and largely fleeting-the most substantial moments pass in a semi-whisper. The visual scheme appears to be derived from Bonnard and Vuillard. Directed by Olivier Assayas and based on a novel by Jacques Chardonne. In French. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A Thought Provoking Epic Tale
The production of porcelain and cognac are the axis around which this film revolves. The film documents and dramatizes the sacrifice involved in maintaining quality during hard political and personal times. Covering several decades, the film intelligently probes philosophical themes of love, duty, family, and death. The acting is superb. Be aware that the movie is some 3 hours, so allot the time. One of my favorite scenes is the waltz scene; the grace of this dance is captured by the turn of the head of Pauline (Beart).

A Visually Magnificent Tale of the Endurance of Love
LES DESTINEES is another one of those period pieces that reminds us of how magic cinema can be. Set at the turn of the century the plot revolves around a triangle of two women and a man who rediscover themselves at the cost of the changes the world endured in the time of the great wars. The importance of family is approached in a pungent way, fighting as it does here against the discovery of honest love: how far will a man of means risk his profession and his marriage for the love of an outsider? Though the story has oft been written and told, much of the success of this film lies in the capable acting hands of Isabelle Huppert, Emannuelle Beart, and Charles Berling. Erring on being a bit too long, the technical aspects of this film seamlessly hold your attention - a vital stage for some fine storytelling and acting.

Love is everything
I read the reviews of quite a few people for this film and would like to comment on certain things omitted from their analysis. For starters, this is a movie about LIFE, so where to start with life? Pick a time zone for the beginning and end of the film. The comment of one intelligent reviewer was that the movie had no "meat" in the beginning or end and that the "meat" was in the middle, but he just doesn't understand that this is merely a movie about life. Why cut out the trip to America? The movie tries to realistically portray business problems and the problems with competing internationally, and it shows how management tried to deal with their problems, and portrayed management as being inept, which happens in life! This reviewer says there is no substance in this movie, but I submit that the reviewer did not pay attention while watching the movie.

This is a wonderful movie about life and the problems of life and relationships, and of love that dies, and a man that is brave enough at the end of the film to admit his shortcomings in life and to finally realize that love is everything, and that without love there is nothing, and this comment concludes the movie, while flashing back to the ballroom dancing, in the beginning, in the year 1900, when this couple was young and in love, which gives the movie closure; characters that you don't like are supposed to not be liked!!

I liked this movie very much and watch lots of international movies and like French films, and this is one of the best films I've seen in quite some time and gets close to a 10 out of 10 rating in my book. The movie appears to start and end abruptly, but keep in mind that this is only a movie about life, and that the starting point and ending point are merely moments in time.