| Zulawski (Szamanka, Femme Publique, Posession) gets performances out of actresses that cannot be believed but he's sometimes undisciplined (as the 160+ minute running time of this film indicates.) Taking his cue from "La Princesse de Clèves", France's first serious historical novel, Zulawski boots it into the modern world and filters this story of fidelity versus desire through an ever-earnest - and very modish - photographer (15 year Zulawski life partner Sophie Marceau, appearing in her lover's films for the fifth time) who is hired by a sleaze-merchant to add class to one of his scandal-sheets. She falls for the charming gaucheness of an editor (Pascal Greggory) but becomes hooked on a blunt, loutish photographer who looks unnervingly like a perfectly-realised mix of Liam and Noel Gallagher. The film throws in almost every event you can think of that will have sensational value (starting with plenty of Marceau nudity) from medical emergencies and society funerals to promiscuous bishops, terrorist assassinations, dirt-track bikers, porn-mag layouts and even nude ice-hockey players. French with English subtitles. 
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