Lennui: Amazon.ca: Charles Berling, Sophie Guillemin, Arielle Dombasle, Robert Kramer, Alice Grey, Maurice Antoni, Tom Ouedraogo, Patrick Arrachequesne, Mirtha Caputi Medeiros, Pierre Chevalier, Oury Milshtein, Anne-Sophie Morillon, Pascal Marti, C�dric Kahn, Yann Dedet, Paulo Branco, Alberto Moravia, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa: DVD

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Video Details

A middle-aged philosophy teacher begins an affair with a young girl that drives him past the point of obsession when he realizes that he can not possess her.

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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever Idea, Jan 9 2003

By

"me-jane" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lennui (DVD)

L'Ennui is driven by a very clever idea and a curious understanding of the perverse quirks of human nature (and male sexuality.) It's classic male fantasy turned nightmare: an older man falls for a younger girl who is beautiful, naive, sexually voracious, and utterly pliant. It's a pornographic dream that gradually becomes more and more hellish to the middle-aged protaganist, who is disillusioned with life (the French call it "ennui"), and groping for some kind of meaning. For, ironically, the utterly sexually available girl cannot be possessed; she is utterly opaque, and because he cannot inhabit her mind, cannot make her feel intensely for him, he becomes neurotically obsessed by her, which, of course, leads to all kinds of abjection and abasement for him. In this, the film explores the tension between the male dream of feminine passivity, and the male nightmare of feminine impassivity.
L'Ennui falters quite a lot; it's turgid, and probably forty minutes too long, hammering the point home long after the emotional terrain of the film has been traversed. Still, it's an intriguing film, often blackly funny, insightful, and, erotic in the way only French films dare to be, all jiggling flesh and too much reality for audiences reared on the smoothed over nothingness of Hollywood.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Long and Boring, Jun 10 2004

By

economicsbooks (Pepperoni, Pizza) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lennui (DVD)

I guess people wants to see this movie for different reasons, I'll try to analyse this movie according to what I expect viewers are looking for and try to dissuade you from seeing it. There is nothing in this movie where you can't find in another with more bells and whistles and fun.

[1] If you're looking for hot arousing sex scenes, forget about it.

[2] If you're trying to explore / understand the psyche of middle aged men, forget about it too. All you'd see is this divorced Professor of Philosophy in his 40s/50s being obsessed about a girl half his age, ringing the girl at all times, tracing her phone numbers, and being confused why he likes the dull boring girl so much. Interesting, but you might wonder if you really need to spend 2 hours to examine the issues?

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars ABSOLUTE AWAKENING, Jun 7 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Lennui (DVD)

I think you miss the whole point of this movie if you are expecting a typical Hollywood "brainwashing" movie. This movie is French. The whole point of the movie is precisely that the woman is not slim and gorgeous like a model (as Hollywood would make you want to believe all woman should be to be desirable to men). The fact that she is chubby makes the point precisely. She is not beautiful in his eyes, she is plain and chubby but he is crazy about her, why? because he cannot posses her. (Apart from physical pleasure there is nothing he can give her to make her interested in him.) And the farther away she is emotionally the more he wants her, and the more obsessed he gets with her. It has nothing to do with the outer physical beauty --she has managed to possess him in every way, without the "beauty" attributes that Hollywood movies would want to instill in the audiences. Her character has weaknesses as to the emotional and that is what drives him crazy about her. This movie is a great awakening into the deeper psyche of men.

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars L' Ennui - DVD
Martin a 40-something teacher has an affair with a girl half his age. There is plenty of sex and nudity (front & rear) in this move. Read more

Published on Jun 5 2004

2.0 out of 5 stars Overrated movie. Sand French doesn't make it cool
There's some sex in this movie. And there are people speaking French. But those two features alone don't make for great cinema. This is not a great movie.

Published on Jan 15 2004 by Colin E. Manning