Not your garden variety tale of frustrated desire and idealistic love gone awry, writer-director Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon stars Marion Cotillard as Gabrielle, a young woman enduring a post-WWII coming-of-age in a rural French village where her overactive imagination and fairy-tale dreams of finding Mr. Right make her a mentally dubious character around town. Gabrielle's micromanaging mother quickly dashes her daughter's hopes when she forces Gabrielle to marry common field hand José, one of the family's loyal farm workers. But when Gabrielle is sent to a hospital in the mountains to recover from kidney stones, she meets handsome soldier André, who turns out to be the storybook man of her dreams. But soon after they agree to go away together following their release from hospital, the script begins an extended tug of war between truth and illusion. Was Gabrielle's steamy fling with this suave military man nothing but a fleeting fever dream of illicit passion? Even though Gabrielle is positioned as the victim of a conformist society, she is also in many ways the chief architect of her own unhappiness. A fine foreign drama, this is recommended. (M. Sandlin)
From the Land of the Moon
MPI, 121 min., in French, Spanish & German w/English subtitles, R, DVD: $24.99, Nov. 21 Volume 33, Issue 1
From the Land of the Moon
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