By the time the end arrives, with its depiction of domestic harmony finally attained and tragically stolen, the movie seems little more than soppy; but even at its best, it's a disappointingly straightforward tale of narcissism and rootlessness put through an artery-hardening political and moral obstacle course. The movie is well choreographed, never more striking than in its images of the Russian occupation, but its aspiration to "classic" art-movie eroticism threatens to reduce everything else to mere gymnastics. Day Lewis is not quite real in his role - an androgynous, closed off icon of self-regard; the so-called "lightness" of his being seems less a psychological state and more a symptom of the movie's too-easy conceptions - as it goes on, the cards seem to be shuffled almost randomly, which serves neither the sex nor the politics well.
Review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being
