L'ennui (1998) Online

This film is a work of genius, capturing the feeling of Ennui in explicit detail. The sex scenes are just that, scenes of sex. To show passion would be to break out of the male leads feeling of boredom or ennui. The female part if one dimensional to give her no redeeming features, after all the male wants her but can't understand why he wants her as she does nothing for him, his pursuit is simply because he can't control her. If she showed any kind of feelings towards him the film would be finished. The film is about obsession and not being able to do anything else because this obsession controls your life and takes all your energy. I found the film both breathtaking and disturbing in equal measures. Definitely one to watch.

When you adapt a work by Alberto Moravia to the screen, you know that human detachment, alienation or themes thereof are going to dominate.

That's what happens in 'L'Ennui' -- characters driven by excess, searching for the unsearchable or the unreachable. The ambiguity of the word 'ennui' fits very well: in English translation, the word can mean not only boredom but also human emptiness. This is what I believe director Cedric Kahn was aiming for, and he's certainly on target.

This is a descent into an obsessive abyss by Martin, played by Charles Berling with such frenetic neuroticism that he all but leaps off the screen. He lives and suffers through the lives of others. He meets Cecilia, a 17-year-old artist's model, stunningly portrayed by Sophie Guilleman. Martin asks questions about the artist, who died shortly after an obsessive love affair with Sophie. Despite his extensive intellectual training in philosophy (a Moravia-Kahn 'in-joke' here), Martin cannot fathom the emotional emptiness of Cecilia, who is a character straight out of, well, the existential literature of Moravia and Camus (Cecilia reminded me of the latter's Mersault in 'L'Etranger,' a classic study of human detachment).

Martin asks Cecelia endless questions about emotional matters, but she cannot answer them. She only understands transient forms of pleasure (never 'happiness'), and her laissez-faire attitude drives Martin into increasing levels of madness. He thinks he loves her, but he has no understanding of love at all, and cannot find the centre of Cecilia's amiable indifference. He screams about 'possessing' her, as if she were a commodity. She neither loves nor hates him; she is simply neutral, which Martin cannot grasp.

This is a brilliant work on a difficult subject, although it's perhaps about 20 minutes too long. Slowly and meticulously, Kahn unpeels the layers of the endless human dilemma called love.

Once again, the French have delivered a film that just wouldn't see the light of day in Hollywood. I can hear the producers in LaLaLand now: who wants to pay for a film that focuses on a basic philosophical problem: the nature of human existence? Fortunately, we can still see these kinds of films, but they'll never come from Hollywood.

Even though I'm not a philosophy professor nor in mid-life I felt every bit of the emotions that Martin went through. I lived much of the same experience(divorce and then new relationship) he does in this movie. The movie evoked strong emotions in me and was almost painful to watch as Martin became more obsessed over Cecelia. Sophie Guillemin is gorgeous and Cecelia was a perfect counter for Martin. While I rate this movie very highly I'm not sure I ever want to see it again. Much too painful, but also excellent.

I've been watching a lot of foreign(mostly French, Italian and Japanese) movies of late and this ranks right near the top.

Very French film in which a jaded, self-centred philosophy professor becomes embroiled in a physically consuming, but emotionally vacant, relationship with a blank young girl. Unpleasant, claustrophobic and sharply humorous, it boasts strong performances from all its cast. But eventually the film's focus, as narrow as that of its central character, starts to become a little wearing. Not wholly successful, but interesting nonetheless.

Imagine a relationship divided into two parts: the smaller one is sex and the rest is talking – about sex, sex and love.

Such is the relationship between Martin and Cécilia in this wonderful movie. I say wonderful because although this premise doesn't sound too entertaining throughout almost two hours, I was really amazed and didn't feel l'ennui – boredom at any phase of the film. Beyond the sex scenes (Sophie Guillemin looks really great, I must say…) and the endless interrogations Martin subjects Cécilia to, the action somehow unfolds and unfolds and in the end we know that we have not only seen a philosophical love film like `Before Sunrise' but a real STORY, a unified whole.

Martin's character is precisely copied from real life by author Alberto Moravia and perfectly portrayed by Charles Berling. This kind of man, apparently philosophical, but actually egocentric, possessive and concerned only about himself, is in my opinion the only realistic modern kind of man who is worth building a fictitious story around. Of course, this story shows, with Martin, mainly the negative qualities of the `generation X'-man.

Cécilia's character holds some problems for me. Obviously, Cédric Kahn is one of those filmmakers whose movies are perfect entertainment, but you're not allowed to think about them later because you catch on things that are truly unconvincing but would destroy the whole movie if you changed them: the person of Cécilia is like Helena in the Greek mythology. She cannot exist in reality. She is just an ideal, completely freed from every kind of feeling or humanity. She answers to Martin's questions eagerly and tirelessly and she has hardly any opinion about anything and that's what drives him crazy – that's what the whole movie is built upon. But a Greek Helena doesn't fit into the amazingly realistic world the movie shows: it's impossible to imagine that she had a life before the beginning of the film and will have one after the end.

By focusing on Martin and his view alle the time, Cédric Kahn is able to prevent us from realizing this while watching and that's a plus for him. However, it is a remarkable flaw in a movie I enjoyed very much. It's a little bit like in `The Sixth Sense': Show one more scene, and the whole movie becomes senseless.

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.

I came across this movie unexpectedly while watching TV late at night. This is probably the best context you can watch this movie in, as fairly light entertainment, with a story I can generally relate to, a pretty lead actress and a frequency of love scenes that is characteristic only of French art house or Californian porn movies. As a serious film though, "L'ennui" does not manage to pull it off -- probably the classic case of a good book being transformed into a lesser movie. The male character comes across as a schoolboy high on testosterone, not the philosophy teacher he is supposed to be (incidentally a position that exists only in French movies where no one ever has to do any real 9 - to - 5 work), the sex scenes in all their explicitness are curiously prudish (the lovers always appear to do it fully dressed and panting as if they had just completed the Ironman contest), and Cécilia's part is just too one - dimensional. Nevertheless, I found the movie entertaining, and it really made me want to read the book (by Alberto Moravia). And you can't say that about too many movies nowadays, can you?

This movie is pure torture for the viewer. But it is extremely important as well. It reflects on the power relationship between men and women. Power is exercised by sex. The erect male member reduces the woman to a slave. Here the young girl reverses the process by simply ignoring it. All all-consuming vagina turns the power relationship around. He wants to control her, to own her - not only her body but also her mind. She gives him her body but also utilizes his body for her needs. When he is unable to get control of her, he loses control of his own life. I'm glad to have watched this movie but I surely won't watch it again.

Cedric Kahn has directed this film based on a novel by Italian writer Alberto Moravia. It is generally said that making a film based on a book is a daunting task. This is precisely the case with this film. L'Ennui is a real oddball film. It is due to its diaphanous nature as no one is really sure what the real theme of this film is. If viewers decide to ruminate over the film's theme, they will have to choose from some weird options :tumultuous sexual escapades in the life of a failed writer, exploitation of a young girl and lastly gross neglect of her old parents by a young girl. The film also suffers from a fundamental flaw which consists of its characters' vacillatory stances. There is a writer who is facing emotional crisis and is not sure of what he is supposed to do. There is a young girl who allows herself to be exploited. Charles Berling is passable as the writer in question. He outlines his frustration through his anger. Sophie Guillemin is above average in a lackluster performance. Admirers of pleasure in films might want to check it out but they would be grossly disappointed by this film's lifeless scenes of physical love.

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.

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 movie is one of the worst movies I have seen in years...an unbelievable piece of crap! In hindsight, I think I would rather watch Showgirls -- or some other lame movie -- multiple times in a row than watch this flick again. The discussions in the movie are pathetic and not stimulating in the least. The movie speeds to an end, accomplishing very little in the process. The lead character is supposed to be obsessed with a sexual relationship with a young female and jealous of her liaisons with others, but he comes off as stupid with little depth. It is a waste of money!

I am somewhat confused about what is wrong with this movie: the cinematography is fine, most actors are reasonably good, but sitting through the two hour movie was quite a challenge due to (surprise!) l'ennui:( I guess the problem lies in the highly predictable and repetitive plot and trite dialogs. And the philosopher sounds more like a bored and disappointed teenager than a scholar.

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-life

For 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.

Yet another overheated French melodrama about sexual obsession, this time based on an old Alberto Moravia novel.

While the three main roles are more than adequately filled by Charles Berling, Sophie Guillemin and Arielle Dombasle, the surfeit of pretentious talk wears the film down and soon grows tiresome (even to hardened art-house film addicts like myself). The main reason to keep watching (apart from the copious sex scenes, of course) is to follow Berling's gradual deterioration from a merely curious seeker of a casual sexcapade to fully-fledged manic depressive. Having a teenaged, plump ugly duckling as the object of his desire has some novelty value, but ultimately her character is so distant and self-centered that one cannot fully empathize with Berling's plight. Also, I haven't read the novel myself but the (relative) happy ending seems misjudged. The vaguely surreal dinner sequences where Berling is introduced to the girl's parents as her music teacher (especially those scenes featuring her cancer-ridden, speech-impaired father) ironically offer a respite from all the glumness but, in retrospect, seem to belong to a totally different film.

Italian film director Damiano Damiani had previously adapted the same source material for the screen as LA NOIA aka THE EMPTY CANVAS (1963) which starred Horst Buchholz, Catherine Spaak and Bette Davis (as Buchholz' mother!), a role which was omitted completely by Cedric Kahn for his modern version. I haven't watched the Damiani film but I would certainly like to, especially since it features a good cast: besides those already mentioned, Isa Miranda, Georges Wilson and Daniela Rocca, also appear.

Though I agree with burrobaggy that the film becomes irritating part way through, I have to say that this is exactly the point of it. We are forced to watch Berling's character become increasingly obsessed with Guillemin's, to the point where we are not only disturbed, but also completely perturbed by his inability to let go of Cecilia, who seems so wonderfully and completely uninterested and distant (something French actresses do best!). I admit that while I watched the movie, I had to turn it off part way through; I, myself, became so anxious by and annoyed with Martin's obsessiveness. At first, I thought it was because the movie was totally unappealing, even unwatchable. However, once I watched the rest of it and I realised that Kahn probably had every attention of making his subject so intense, so masochistic, and so repetitively annoying in his obsession, the utter irritation and anxiety that the movie provoked in me suggested that not only is the filmmaker very successful in representing pathological behaviour, but also in implicating his audience in that representation.

In my limited experience of them, I have not yet seen a French film with any redeeming qualities. And L'ennui does not halt that sequence, as it is without doubt the worst film I've seen since...well, since the last French film I watched. The story, as far as you could call it that, concerns a boring, selfish and distrustful university professor falling in ‘love' with a seventeen year old girl who seems to have no emotions. I've put ‘love' in inverted commas, because essentially they just do it a lot. And I've said that the girl ‘seems' to have no emotions. That was wrong of me, because it suggests that she has some hidden under the surface. She doesn't. She is possibly the most one dimensional character of any film ever. No attempt has been made to make her seem more human; she is just a non-stop sex machine. With bad dialogue. The actress who plays her might be superb at pretending to be emotionally dead, or she might just be wooden - it's hard to tell the difference.

The frequent sex scenes are, to be honest, a little grotesque, and the rest of the time is taken up by very long passages of question and answer between the two leads. The boring, selfish and distrustful man asks a general question about life, the 1D woman answers with `I don't know'. Every. Single. Time. So, all in all this is your stereotypical French art film. It's also an insult to anyone who likes intelligent cinema, that they think they can pawn (or maybe that should be porn?) us off with this vague, meandering, interest-free rubbish.

The film got good reviews in the UK when screened on TV, described in the listings as an "erotic, comedy drama...with outstanding performances". Erotic - not for me; comedy - definitely not(dreary and humourless throughout); drama - yes but with minimalist plot and unengaging theme; outstanding performances - both leads failed to provoke much interest in either their character or plight. We all have different tastes and interests but I have to warn you... other than it was another exercise in improving my French, I really felt I had wasted two hours. If you are not enjoying it after half an hour my advice would be give it up - it does not get better.

Every adult human being has proved, at least once in his life, the tormented agony of being in love and not corresponded. Obviously, what usually happens (and we wouldn't need a film to understand this) is sheer sufferance because we want he/she be our lover, girlfriend/boyfriend or, in other words, we want a relationship. But no correspondence means that this relationship is negated, rejected, refused, delayed --- and this is painful, of course, and leads to desperation, or to desperate actions to conquer her/him.

In this film, we see that this kind of ache can have a different form: yes we "have" her/him, yes she/he is with us, we have a relationship, we are together --- or at least so it looks. But, yet, we feel we do not really have her/him. She's with us, but absent; she makes love, but doesn't know our name. And then? Pain, again, and even worse, because we cannot know how to react. What would we like to do? Make love to her? Already do. Be with her? All the time. Love her? Be loved back? So she says. What we don't have her. We cannot do anything but to go crazy.

This is the theme of this film, quite well depicted.

This movie is great. I started watching the beginning by chance, channel-hopping at 2am, and did not intend to keep watching, but it was SO GOOD, that I watched it all the way to the end. I actually laughed out loud at some scenes, by myself in my lounge, which is rare. And also found the philosophy teacher's spiral into obsession really sad. He spends his life asking questions, and she spends hers asking none. When he reaches the epitome of his frustration, and he tries to strangle her, you almost want him to succeed. I also liked the way Cécilia was realistic-looking, not traditionally goodlooking in the face or body, but merely had "something about her" that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but it kept him involved. And as such I think this film has "something about it" I can't put mine on either, but it kept me involved when watching it. Check it out.

It's relentless: every question from Berling that calls for more than a yes or no is parried by Guillemin, which leads to exasperation, then to sexual excitement leading to another bout in the sack. "I don't know... never thought about it" becomes a suit of armor for the girl facing her maddened lover.

There is a whimsical aspect to all this (thank God, too)--it's Arielle Dombasle's performance as the funny, sensible Sophie, a sort of aunt to Berling. She has all the wisdom that Berling needs but can't use. Cedric Kahn, who directed, seems to be a competent workman but no more. The Moravia novel on which the picture is based is a good airport novel, as Bertolucci said about The Conformist, but it's sometimes the airport book that can be turned into an effective film, as here.