movie review from the land of the moon

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Love, lust and languor in 'from the land of the moon'.

Mark Jenkins

Rose-Drunk Love: Marion Cotillard as Gabrielle in Nicole Garcia's From The Land of The Moon. Sundance Selects hide caption

Rose-Drunk Love: Marion Cotillard as Gabrielle in Nicole Garcia's From The Land of The Moon.

"Why choose to be unhappy?"

Gabrielle (Marion Cotillard), the protagonist of From the Land of the Moon , addresses that question to the man who's agreed to marry her. But it might just as well be directed to Gabrielle herself, or to veteran French writer-director Nicole Garcia, because both sink into sorrow as if it were a feather bed.

Told mostly in flashback, the movie's story begins in the late 1940s, when Gabrielle is a teenager — a stretch even for the reliably brilliant but 41-year-old Cotillard. She plays the character over a span of 20 years without any physical transformation other than changes of clothes and hair styles.

At her youngest, Gabrielle is a deeply frustrated small-town romantic, nursing a crush on the local schoolteacher. He makes the mistake of lending her a copy of Wuthering Heights , which Gabrielle sees as a token of the married man's interest in her. "It's a book !" he protests after she hands him a sexually explicit love letter at a communal village dinner.

Gabrielle makes a scene, and her mother (Brigitte Rouan) decides that the only way to prevent further family embarrassment is to marry her daughter off. She selects Jose (Alex Brendemuhl), a Catalan bricklayer who fled Franco and ended up in the south of France. Gabrielle's wealthy parents — rich in lavender, of all things — will finance a construction firm for him if he marries their daughter.

Gabrielle argues against the deal, promising unhappiness and, by the way, no sex. Jose accepts nonetheless, and moves his new bride to a port city. He's a dutiful husband, aside from regular Saturday-night visits to a brothel.

Kidney stones — mal de pierres , the movie's French title — eventually send Gabrielle to a Swiss mountain spa for a water cure. There she meets Andre (Louis Garrel), a handsome lieutenant whose kidneys are in even worse shape due to a tropical disease contracted while serving in France's Indochina colonies.

Could Gabrielle become a French lieutenant's woman? She certainly thinks so.

Shadowy and sensuous, From the Land of the Moon is consistently interesting to look at. Cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne shoots the widescreen imagery in the lithe handheld style common in contemporary French cinema, while the production design keeps the tale assuredly in-period.

There's an enveloping languor to the spa sequences, a drugginess that mimics the effects of the opium Andre chews to allay pain. For Gabrielle, of course, love is the drug. But romance seems to be healing even Andre, who comes from a military family and says he's never really known a woman before — although he seems more poet than soldier. The charismatically indisposed officer plays melancholy Tchaikovsky on the piano and reads a book titled About Happiness — which, of course, he gives to Gabrielle. Unhappiness awaits, as it must. But Garcia and co-scripter Jacques Fieschi's scenario — derived from Milena Agus' bestselling novella — is worse than star-crossed. It relies on a third-act revelation that's both implausible and a narrative cheat. The disclosure leaves the always unsympathetic Gabrielle looking downright inexplicable.

As we already know from the prologue, Gabrielle and Jose are still together years later. But taciturn, accepting Jose is barely developed as a character, so the survival of the marriage appears to rely on circumstance rather character. From the Land of the Moon could have been a story of a woman's maturation, or a relationship's evolution. Instead, it just moons about love so lost that it may never have existed at all.

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• From The Land Of The Moon

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From the Land of the Moon Reviews

It’s melodramatic to the hilt, but it pulled me in and made me sob like a baby by the end.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2024

From the Land of the Moon is not without merit -Cotillard's expressive face is compulsively watchable- but be prepared for some significant suspension of disbelief.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 5, 2020

Cotillard's emotional energy is wasted in Garcia's capably directed romantic drama, which is visually polished by Christophe Beaucarne, though his glossy frames actually create an accidental desolation in the film's jagged void of unlikely drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 10, 2019

Do not be afraid that it's a French Film, do not be afraid that it's a love movie. It's a film that invites you in with its images and the powerful moral it entails. Do not miss. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 14, 2018

It's difficult to imagine how this film would have been without the presence of the actress of La Vie en Rose and Two days, One Night. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 27, 2017

A surprise late-picture twist fails to ring true and isn't all that surprising, anyway.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2017

The mistakes of From the Land of the Moon are wide-ranging, but they all start with a character who's not worth our time.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 18, 2017

Almost laughable in its broad, empty portrayal of sexual desire.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2017

Instead of any meaningful exploration of mental illness, the film exploits the affliction of its protagonist for a meandering romantic melodrama with an unconvincing final-act twist.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2017

Marion Cotillard is in over her head working to save a tedious screenplay that depends too much on her character alone.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 5, 2017

[From the Land of the Moon] makes for a rather tedious exploration of a rebellious and repressed spirit.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.8/10 | Aug 4, 2017

Moments of visual beauty only call attention to the stilted dialogue and maudlin plot that otherwise define the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 3, 2017

Garcia never gets a grasp on her protagonist's contradictions, or those of her story - certainly not enough to pull off the movie's jaw-dropper of a twist.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2017

A film with the impeccable performance of Àlex Brendemühl and an always stimulating Louis Garrel; Two poles of a misdiagnosed misfortune that finds an academic film therapy. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2017

Director Nicole Garcia creates a romantic drama that at times falls back on clichés, but also covers new ground with a love-it-or-hate-it unexpected ending.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2017

Another French examination of l'amour fou, this one verging on risibility with its excessive devotion to the excessiveness of its heroine.

Cotillard's madwoman contortions cannot pass for innocent adolescent pique, and this exposes the film's fakery...with sidelong references to imperialism and immigration, the film becomes increasingly absurd and indulgent.

The story could have used a little less Under the Tuscan Sun and a little more All That Heaven Allows.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 28, 2017

From the Land of the Moon could have been a story of a woman's maturation, or a relationship's evolution. Instead, it just moons about love so lost that it may never have existed at all.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2017

[A] mostly turgid, occasionally risible period piece ...