An overwrought tale of amour fou, this tumultuous melodrama wilts under scrutiny, its torrid hothouse blooms doused in iced water. Marion Cotillard stars as Gabrielle, a young woman whose spirit is a little too free for provincial 1950s France. Shamed by her overt sexuality, her parents give her a stark choice – wed a stranger, or be committed to a mental asylum. The marriage is as successful as you might expect, given the circumstances. But when Gabrielle is sent to a mountain sanitorium to be cured of her abdominal pains, she meets Andre (Louis Garrel). Smouldering, poetic and doomed, he is her ideal mate, and becomes the focus of an obsession that eats up the subsequent years. It’s a handsome enough production that shares with Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth a striking mountain-top location. But the final twist ramps up the feverish silliness of a story that is already unintentionally daft.
