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Strong and Moving!

just watch it!

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Philips99us wrote a good review: I agree fully with his opinion. What he noticed was just that what makes it a good film: interesting about what love can do to people in general. The dialogues, written by someone who knows his craft, are about what really matters in this film. Technically very well made on all aspects. Special attention was given to the soundtrack with beautifull songs. You could think sometimes: were they composed especially for this movie? Only one time I was amazed: why not a real kind of attention by the husband can be seen at the end of the movie to his wife when she (Meryl Streep) shows deep emotions in the car on the way home after seeing for the last time her love "for four days"? Fascinating acting by Clint Eastwood, once played a cowboy in Rawhide in the sixties... And also, as always, by Meryl Streep: what an art of acting: wonderfull!

This was the first time that I watched Clint Eastwood as an actor. I knew who he was, but as a teenage girl, I wasn't interested in cowboys and Dirty Harry. But this love story was a huge hit, so I decided to watch it, in spite of Clint Eastwood. I expected a different sort of character, maybe more in line with Dirty Harry, but he seemed sweet. I also didn't expect to like him as an actor more than Meryl Streep, because Meryl was considered such a great actress and Clint was just a gunslinger. But then I realized that I preferred that kind of acting, simply based on presence, an actor who's not afraid to show who he is. And my female gaze loved the shirtless Clint. I just love it when an artist is full of surprises.

Okay, now this movie forces me to rethink upon an issue that has been troubling me for a long time now. If you married young and have a life and kids and everything, the popular culture portrays it as a failure to live your life completely. Let's get to the movie before I elaborate. Enter Francesca Johnson an Italian war bride who is married to a hardworking, honest, down to soil farmer who loves her but as usual he has many other things to care about rather than serenading his wife all the time. The husband takes the two kids off to Illinois Country fair and Francesa declines the invitation to come along. Enter Robert Kincaid, a dashing devil may care, rangy, cowboy photographer. He's intense he loves his job and roams the world like a free wind. No tangles no relations to hold him down. And obviously Francesca stumbles hopelessly in love with him. Now my point is lady, that guy is like the text book definition of a cool guy he's charming and he has these philosophies and ideas and all this is very appealing to Francesca. But we must keep in mind a passionate 4 day affair is easy a life time of camaraderie and support is another. I hate this idea that it's bad to just be with one person and boring means your life has amounted to nothing. I believe this ideology has increased unhappiness and occurrences of unfaithfulness. Cool kids are fine but they don't stick around. We need to glorify the silent real men who stick through till the bitter end. That's all I have to say. Movie is okay but the idea ruins it for me, although it does have a nice description of the bucolic life. It's a cinematic equivalent of American pastoral.

After seeing bits and pieces of this film on too many occasions, I finally sat down to really watch it. For what seems like forever, I have known that this is the quintessential "chick flick" that makes women swoon and cry. Huh?I found it formulaic and foolish. Hmmm, 4 days? Four days, you decide that a guy ambling through town is the love of your life? Hollywood is pathetic. I kept trying to care about these people and about the cliché'd housewife who agonizes over whether to leave her husband and her children and run off with a guy she just met. We love and romanticize what we don't have and take for granted what we do. --Especially since we only see their best side in the beginning, while trying to compare that with the reality in which we live. Hollywood loves and elevates the superficial and denigrates truth and reality. It's possible that the only way lovers like these could remain in love with such a fantasy is precisely because they never dealt with real life together. It might not have been so romantic. Maybe they would even have discovered that they weren't as compatible as they thought. Still, the mysterious man of the world "that got away" is what makes women cry. I'll tell you what I find romantic. The couple who has been through hell and back together and still get butterflies at the sight of one another.On top of all of that.......Streep is overrated in this. If that was an Italian accent, I wonder what Czechoslovakian sounds like.