This movie is based on a novel. This is a very important fact. The opening credits show us the novel, presumably so that we will all know what a book looks like. To emphasise the fact that this is a movie based on a novel, there is lots of narrative voice-over. The voice-over is helpful for those of us who cannot see the screen. It describes what is going on on screen, and it also describes what is going on in the characters' minds, presumably because for some reason the director has no other means of letting us know what is going on in their minds. And the voice-over is rather tedious just like the way I'm writing this is tedious. No, seriously, it's awful. The French guy is staying with the two English girls and their mother, and as the camera shows us 1 French guy, 1 English girl, and 1 mother at dinner, plus 1 empty chair, the voice-over tells us the other English girl isn't there. We watch them eat in silence. The voice-over tells us they ate in silence. It got to the stage where the voice-over said something about them (out for a walk) coming to a rushing torrent. My own personal voice-over said "If I see a rushing torrent in the next two seconds, I'm out of here". Bingo! Of course, this all wouldn't be so bad if the story itself was particularly interesting, but, as judicious use of the fast-forward button made clear, it's just your standard tedious French drivel that claims to have the last word about human relationships. Some movie adaptations you can dismiss as "better off just reading the book", but with this one you're better off reading a book on a different topic by a different author. (Note added later: I subsequently have seen a couple of Eric Rohmer films and didn't like those either! So I concede that there's a particular type of movie that I hate: the French philosophical relationships movie).
Review of Two English Girls
