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Redundant and unnecessary.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Great Film overall

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Overall I think the film justifies the mixed reaction it has had here. I agree with one of the posters that if you are going to set a film in Paris and SELL it on the basis that it IS set in Paris then the least you can do is to CONVINCE us that we ARE in Paris; I think the poster in question was perfectly correct to state that we might be anywhere given that roughly 90 per cent of the action occurs in the dismal, grey eponymous boarding house. That same poster speculated on what an attractive and wealthy young American would see in Shaun Dingwall's Grunewald, I would go even farther and ask what ANY woman would see in such a colorless character let alone Julie Delpy who, against all the Laws of Reason, falls madly in love with him. Life at the Villa is hardly a million laffs so that my allusion to The Lower Depths is not that far out. On the positive side the acting is uniformly excellent but the overriding impression is of Julie Delpy's fragile Dresden Sheperdess presiding over a gallery of grotesques. Maybe you should see it once for the experience.

It's a totally surreal movie that did remind me of "Delicatessen". Even the peculiar pastel colors are similar. The tale? A new maid starts working at a dilapidated boarding house - a pension - in Paris, in 1913, and she gets involved with a young German artist who lives there. Her relationship with him is the central part of the plot, but the other characters add subplots in their own strange ways. The people who live there are peculiar, the owners are peculiar, the situations are peculiar... but I got caught in it and came to enjoy the faintly claustrophobic atmosphere. Drama, touches of black humor, absurdity, love and betrayal, it's got it all. Not an absolute masterpiece but well worth seeing.

Even though I haven't read the book this movie was based on, I'm sure that it must be a lot better than the movie itself. Willem Elschot, the writer who wrote the book is seen as one of our finest and his books are considered as masterpieces, but I'm afraid I can't say the same about this movie. I'm not saying that it is bad, but it just isn't good enough and I'm sure that Willem Elschot wouldn't have been too happy with this rather sterile adaptation of his book either.It's sterile because there are too many questions that are left unanswered. Not that I always want everything to be clear even before the movie ends. I like intellectually challenging movies, but this time you never really get to know the characters, you'll not find out what drives them, what exactly happens to them, why they all live in that lousy hotel in Paris that once must have been a marvelous villa... It all looks very gray and dull, even though the "relationship" between the maid and the German tries to bring some light to it. But it isn't enough to stay focused on the entire story.Maybe you think now that this movie must be the worst ever, well that's not true either. Frank Van Passel is still a very talented director and he had an excellent cast to work with. Some moments in the movie were absolutely great (for instance the abortion scene was very chilling), but it was never enough to cover all the holes in the plot. I give this movie a 6.5/10.

I think Frank Van Passel and Christophe Dirickx have succeeded beautifuly in capturing the essence of Elschot's classic novel. Sure, the other characters may have been minimised in the plot, but by doing so, the bulk of the story is allowed to breathe. You can only get so much of a large novel into 2hrs of screentime.As for continually asking the question "why?", I have a question: Why is this a problem? I found it very stimulating to question throughout this film- I don't like to be spoon-fed answers. It kept me thinking. Not a bad thing.By the end of the film, I was very glad of the ambiguity. I think it captured the ambiguity of love, lust and ambition. It didn't try to tie everything up in a ribbon- a bit like life itself really.Beautifully written, directed and performed.