I'll start by agreeing with others here that the acting in the movie was very good, Emmanuelle in particular did a great job. The kids even did a good job although at times they were forced to use lines that kids would never say (um, 10ish year-old girl screaming about wanting to get impregnated? Okay ...) Unfortunately, the actors and the scenery were the best things about this movie.
While watching the film I simply did not understand why there was a sexual encounter between the mother and the teen boy. There was no buildup, there was no real interest between the characters, it just BAM happened. It came completely out of the blue (although bless you Ms. Beart. I'd loved to have been in that kid's shoes during that scene ...) This relationship that was built up somewhat in the trailer and the advertising made no sense whatsoever. The "love" story in this movie seemed like a complete "Hollywood" style cop-out where a little bit of skin or sex has to be included in any movie about "relationships" to make the mouth-breathing public happy.
After listening to some of the interviews on the DVD I was finally able to figure out where the director went horribly wrong. The author of the original book said that in his story the 2 soldiers tried to rape the mother until the teen boy comes out of the blue and saves her. After that she sleeps with him somewhat out of gratitude. That at least sounds plausible.
However, the explanation of why she slept with him in the movie ... that the she became lonely after hearing about the soldier talking about going back to his family ... I completely missed in the film. When they brought up this idea in the interviews it felt like I must've been watching a completely different movie.
This film introduced the soldiers as potentially dangerous characters, and throughout their scenes we were never led to cast our doubt aside. Therefore the idea of her being so moved by this soldier's story (a soldier that might be thinking of raping her) that her loneliness drives her to have sex with the teen boy (of which she seemingly had no real interest) is laughable. The audience was never led to believe much of anything that left the soldier's mouth, so why should we accept that the mother character would be so moved by it that it would drive her to very suddenly jump the bones of the teen boy? Without the soldiers attempting to rape her, as what occurred in the book, there was never any ultimate resolution between the two world-views of the main characters ... the survival of the fittest mentality of the boy (who was ready to attack the unarmed soldiers with an axe) vs. the living through society/morality viewpoint put forth by the mother. The movie just sort of ended ... If the boy had gone ahead to murder the soldiers there would've at least been some deeper question revealed about how people maybe need to make choices between life/death/killing/stealing/etc when they are forced into the middle of a situation where their lives are in danger. This conflict between world-views, that the movie was seemingly built toward, was completely abandoned and unresolved.
While watching the film I simply did not understand why there was a sexual encounter between the mother and the teen boy. There was no buildup, there was no real interest between the characters, it just BAM happened. It came completely out of the blue (although bless you Ms. Beart. I'd loved to have been in that kid's shoes during that scene ...) This relationship that was built up somewhat in the trailer and the advertising made no sense whatsoever. The "love" story in this movie seemed like a complete "Hollywood" style cop-out where a little bit of skin or sex has to be included in any movie about "relationships" to make the mouth-breathing public happy.
After listening to some of the interviews on the DVD I was finally able to figure out where the director went horribly wrong. The author of the original book said that in his story the 2 soldiers tried to rape the mother until the teen boy comes out of the blue and saves her. After that she sleeps with him somewhat out of gratitude. That at least sounds plausible.
However, the explanation of why she slept with him in the movie ... that the she became lonely after hearing about the soldier talking about going back to his family ... I completely missed in the film. When they brought up this idea in the interviews it felt like I must've been watching a completely different movie.
This film introduced the soldiers as potentially dangerous characters, and throughout their scenes we were never led to cast our doubt aside. Therefore the idea of her being so moved by this soldier's story (a soldier that might be thinking of raping her) that her loneliness drives her to have sex with the teen boy (of which she seemingly had no real interest) is laughable. The audience was never led to believe much of anything that left the soldier's mouth, so why should we accept that the mother character would be so moved by it that it would drive her to very suddenly jump the bones of the teen boy? Without the soldiers attempting to rape her, as what occurred in the book, there was never any ultimate resolution between the two world-views of the main characters ... the survival of the fittest mentality of the boy (who was ready to attack the unarmed soldiers with an axe) vs. the living through society/morality viewpoint put forth by the mother. The movie just sort of ended ... If the boy had gone ahead to murder the soldiers there would've at least been some deeper question revealed about how people maybe need to make choices between life/death/killing/stealing/etc when they are forced into the middle of a situation where their lives are in danger. This conflict between world-views, that the movie was seemingly built toward, was completely abandoned and unresolved.