A spiritual and thematic sister to my favorite Farhadi, About Elly, but missing all of the edges and obfuscations of that great screenplay. In that sense this almost feels like a Hollywood remake of that other film. Would be served so much better without how neatly it is tied up in the end.
That first hour is crackling, though, and there may be no other filmmaker who can put all the pieces down on the board so masterfully.
Oof. After watching Late Night last night seeing this made me up my rating of that. Lots to admire here but aggressively unfunny at times when it is trying so hard to be the opposite.
Always a delight spending time with these women, though. More of them please! Can we franchise this to them taking trips to wine-centric areas all over the world? France, New Zealand, Chile, Greece, even Japan for rice-wine!
So, I loved this film (despite its many flaws) mostly because Jean Simmons is fantastic in this and WHY does nobody talk about this performance?!
