From the Land of the Moon

In the eighth feature from French actress-turned-director Nicole Garcia (Place Vendôme), hearts break beautifully yet it's difficult to care. Marion Cotillard stars as a provocative young woman hastily married off by her mortified mother to one of the family's farmhands (Alex Brendemühl). He's the dutiful type but his wife is not fussed and encourages him to satisfy his desires elsewhere; later, when she's diagnosed with kidney stones and sent to an Alpine spa, she falls for Louis Garrel's military man. Although shot with grace by Coco before Chanel's Christophe Beaucarne, it's a film that never sweeps you up in the story. The love affair is wholly uninspiring, there's zero chemistry between a contrary Cotillard and a wan Garrel - he's so remote and lacklustre that it's hard to fathom the attraction - and negligible tension arises when Brendemühl becomes a cuckold. Final reel revelations seeking to shed light on what came before take the form of a jarring twist, but by then it's too late anyway.