What a dreary and depressing movie! The script is ridiculously inadequate to begin with and takes a laughable turn towards ludicrous. The romance between Irons and Binoche comes out of nowhere and is not believable for a moment. Their love scenes are obviously meant to be passionate but they are so poorly executed that they come across as rather comical. It is hard to believe that someone like Irons would risk everything for someone as incredibly bland as Binoche is portrayed to be here. Irons does his usual pompous blow-hard routine. The only notable performance is given by Richardson as Irons's suffering wife. This is undoubtedly the worst film of Malle's career.