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islandgirl1968
Reviews
La vie d'une autre (2012)
A great movie about life not turning out the way you expected.
This movie does require some suspension of disbelief. A woman falls asleep after a night of passion with a new man, and wakes up 15 years later, having forgotten her life in between. Juliette Binoche is excellent as the confused Marie, who is trying to both work out what happened and how her life ended up in this way. As she struggles to deal with it all, she realises she has one chance to try to turn it around.
If you can just flow with the story, imagining that such a thing as retrograde amnesia( suggested as a possible answer to what's happened) could happen for no apparent reason, and just enjoy Binoche's acting, you will love this movie. I don't normally cry in movies ( too obvious emotional manipulation), but one scene towards the end is raw and heart rending which shows the extent I got lost in the story.
Walked out wondering how I would react if one day I woke up and forgot 15 years of my life - would the 28 year old me be surprised/dismayed/shocked about who I have become? I think that is the beauty of this story for me - the 'what if' that we all wonder about and whether we end up realising our dreams in the way we expected or end up on quite a different path. Perhaps as a woman off 44, it's far easier for me to identify with the character than a 20- or even a 30-something.
Definitely worth watching.