The Children of the Century Reviews

Never has the adage "You can't help who you fall in love with" been more lavishly illustrated than in this historical drama about the Parisian writer and proto-feminist George Sand — née Aurore Dupin — and poet-playwright Alfred de Musset. When they meet in 1833, Sand (Juliette Binoche) is a 29-year-old, bohemian mother of two in an open marriage with a husband who lives elsewhere. Like a much more talented Madonna-of-her-era, she's as famous for her celebrity affairs as for her "scandalous" works. The 23-year-old Musset (Benoit Magimel, who looks like Sean Penn's foppish second cousin) is a figure more in the Jim Morrison mode, a popular talent who overindulges in sex (as portrayed here, mostly in brothels), drugs (opium's a favorite) and Romantic poetry. The film depicts the Romantic movement as a sort of monied-class Beat movement with ruffly shirts and derives its title from Musset's autobiographical La Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle (1835), which recounts his small-"r" romance with Sands, which lasted two intense years but included sporadic run-ins until Musset's death in 1857. The relationship could have created the terms "codependent relationship," "battered-woman syndrome" and "Jesus Christ, what is she thinking?" They meet at a salon reading of Sand's novel Lelia, which called for sexual and societal equality for women and ignited a vitriolic firestorm among literary critics of the day. Soon Sand — who famously smoked cigars and, to make a point, often dressed in men's clothing — and younger-man Musset become the talk of Paris. Not long after, they go to Venice to become the talk of that town for awhile. Sand becomes seriously ill, Musset ignores her to go whoring and gambling, and they befriend a kindly, handsome young doctor, Pietro Pagello (Stefano Dionisi). Sand recovers and writes, and Musset variously betrays, belittles and beats her. Then he ODs and almost dies, occasioning much wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on Sand's part. He recovers, they fight, they break up, they get back together, they fight, they break up... It all drags on so interminably it's like watching a miserable relationship unfold in real time. Sand declares, "We only love once with all our soul," yet we get no more insight into her obsessiveness than that of Glenn Close's witchy character in FATAL ATTRACTION (1987). There's an allusion to multiple orgasms in one of their apparently rare couplings, but that hardly seems to balance Musset's stream of psychological, emotional and physical abuse. A distasteful, abusive relationship can make for pungent drama even if neither of the main characters is sympathetic — SID AND NANCY (1986) comes to mind — but unless the movie provides insight into why the characters behave the way they do, they remain simply "exasperating doormat" and "total bastard." (In French, with subtitles)