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The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

If we discount the dirty mac brigade who are likely to buy the DVD on the strength of the picture on the box the selling points for the rest of us are the names Cedric Kahn - who latest film, Feux Rouges, was definitely out of the right bottle - and Charles Berling, who is reliable rather than brilliant with some solid credits behind him. Berling's growing sexual obsession with Sophie Guilleman is believable because in real life I would imagine that more men, middle aged or otherwise, develop obsessions with ordinary girls/women than with the Pamela Anderson/Jordan in-yer-face sex objects. This is not to say that Guilleman is chopped liver but she is an Average girl; average looks, average figure, average sexuality and again it is, I suspect, much easier to develop a sexual obsession about a girl who is much more likely to be available to the Average man, which is what Berling is both on and off screen. The idea of a young girl believed to have killed a man three times her age via sex clearly invests her with a certain cachet not least in the eyes of a philosophy teacher drifting aimlessly yet inexorably towards mid-life crisis and not even searching for a paddle. The concept of a young girl who actually enjoys sex for its own sake and is unwilling and/or incapable of adding love to the mix, a creature in effect prepared and eager to experience sexual fulfillment as often and with as many different partners as possible and remain loyal to none is not exactly new and each time this story is told the only possible interest lies in the man who is unable to share her and how long it takes to reach its inevitable tragic conclusion. This one is as good as any but better than few.

This is a classic case of great performance, shame about the movie. Sophie Guillemin is quite a revelation - in every sense - without ever appearing to do much or indeed anything. Here she reminded me a lot of Isabelle Huppert in The Lacemaker (only with much more nudity), with much of Huppert's brand of everyday sexuality. Guillemin's a blank slate of a schoolgirl/model that men in crisis project their fantasies on to. She gives them her body but nothing else, and seems constantly detached and immune to surprise or emotional or intellectual involvement, much to the distress of her latest part-time conquest, recently divorced teacher/author Charles Berling. The downward spiral of obsession that will destroy his life is a given, and that's the problem. The film constantly tries to raise the stakes to surprise us by how much further it will go, but by the last third he's become so intensely irritating in yet another variation of the previous scene - only louder and more desperate - that you lose interest. Had it ended half an hour earlier it might have been more successful, but this seriously outstays its welcome. Poor movie, but definitely worth a watch for Guillemin.

In this psychological farce we see the demise of philosophy tutor Martin (Charles Berling) who embarks on a sexually charged foray with the young and rubenesque Cecilia (Sophie Guillaume).Berling does ‘obsessive' with great zeal and gives us enough of an insight into the sane Martin to maintain some sympathy with him later in the film. Guillaume is a likeable if not slightly difficult to understand character. We understand that she enjoys sexual pleasure and right from the start reveals an awareness of her effect on the older men with whom she has relationships but she continues to tolerate unquestioningly the excesses of Martin's behaviour long after we feel she would have ceased. Arielle Dombasle plays the increasingly likeable character of Martin's wife, a less and less willing confidante, and a woman concerned to protect her new-lifeFor a film based on sexual obsession, the sex depicted is quite unrealistic and verges on the comic at times.A bit long, but not ‘ennuyant' and for me, was a bit disappointing.

Based on the novel of Alberto Moravia, "L'Ennui" tells us the story of a philosphy teacher (Charles Berling) who, just separated from his wife, meets the young and buxom Cecilia, former model of a painter who died making love to her. As their relationship grows, we fall with Berling into despair (when he is unable to quit her even if he wants to) and even jealousy. The famous scholar cannot find relief in his knowledge, nor in his irritated former wife and is therefore condemned to wander alone, following this woman, directly out from a Renoir painting, he love and despise at the same time and his depiction is really living.