Pauline & Paulette
Added 2/4/2009
I saw this movie on Direct TV and I had to have it.its amazing how the director was able to create the mood, tenderness and the seriousness of what happens in the family..Pauline will tear at your heart as will Paulette..its a movies you will want to share with family and friends and watch it everytime with them and enjoy like the first time.
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Two great actresses collide and converge in PAULINE and PAULETTE
Added 10/6/2007
Any film viewer who cherishes a well done story and relishes delicious acting from two great actresses needs to take a long and hard look at PAULINE ET PAULETTE.Belgian veteran dames Dora van der Groen and Ann Petersen shared best actress award for this sensitive,comical and heart-wrenching story of two sisters,one who is mentally-challenged and one who is challenged-mentally.Pauline (van der Groen who has ANTONIA's LINE and VILLA des ROSES to her long credits) has the mental capacity of a child.When her caretaker dies,sister Paulette (Petersen) is forced to have Pauline stay with her.Pauline is an innocent who needs everything just her way;Paulette is also set in her ways as a lingerie shopkeeper and an amateur opera singer.Pauline, childlike, adores her older sister.Paulette cannot be bothered with the intruding annoyance of her simple-minded sister.Paulette packs Pauline off to live with their younger sister Cecile and her French boyfriend,but Pauline WANTS Paulette,so back she comes.The hilarity never lets up and the timing of two magnificent pros with a sharp and clever script clocking in at a perfect 73 minutes is irresistible as a supreme example of a film sharply focused,trimmed of excess fat and served up for a great viewing experience.
For those not familiar with Belgian film,PAULINE ET PAULETTE is a first rate introduction to the world of the European character-driven,actor par excellent movie.Along with films such as DAENS, ANTONIA'S LINE,THE OX,GOOD EVENING MR.WALLENBERG,ELLING,BLACK BOOK,CHARACTER and EMMA'S SHADOW Flemish cinema is the still, IMO ,undiscovered treasure of moviedom.Folks that enjoy reading will enjoy the well paced,character-filled screenplays of Belgian movies.
On VHS and DVD, PAULINE ET PAULETTE is a bargain for such rich entertainment.IT is in Flemish with very readable subtitles.(You won't even realize that it is foreign after a few minutes)
Great companion films that feature a pair of great acting jobs would be LADIES IN LAVENDER (Judi Dench and Maggie Smith),NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett) and IRIS (Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent).
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Pauline and Paulette
Added 7/23/2007
Sensitive and humane, but never saccharine, Debrauwer's witty, touching portrait of four sisters avoids all the clichés one expects in depictions of mental disability. Groen (star of "Antonia's Line") is a marvel playing the childlike Paulette, a limited, sweet-natured woman whose capacities for understanding are greater than others suppose. Meanwhile Pauline and Cecile puzzle over how they can place her in an institution without losing their inheritance--a condition of Martha's will. With its wry, delicate observations of a family in crisis, "Pauline and Paulette" will stealthily win your heart.
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Pauline & Paulette
Added 8/28/2006
Flemish with English subtitles. No, I am not one of those art house snobs. I don't drink white wine, smoke Russian cigarettes or wear a black beret. I just happen to think this film is wonderful. The funniest situations in life don't come with a laugh track, and tragedy doesn't need syrupy sentimentality. I'm glad I didn't read the jacket before viewing, since it gives away most of the "plot." This movie is about character, style and substance as much as it is about plot, but still. Let me enjoy the surprises too, okay? This film could not be better than it is, and I'll watch it again.
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The Perils of Pauline - and Paulette
Added 4/3/2006
PAULINE AND PAULETTE is a bittersweet little slice of life drama about four sisters, three of them senior citzens. The oldest sister Martha takes care of the mentally retarded sister, Pauline, while the two other sisters have gone on with their lives, the youngest sister Cecile having moved away Pauline doesn't even remember who she is. Pauline idolizes her somewhat indifferent sister Paulette who runs a small women's fashion shop and performs regularly in local amateur opera productions. Pauline in her limited mental capacity perhaps recognizes a kindred spirit: both sisters have a love of beauty, Pauline forever watering Martha's flowers and never without her scrapbook of pictures of flowers roughly torn out of magazines or from scraps of gift wrap, Paulette lives in a candy-box world with her rosy red boutique and her small home and it's womanly bric-a-brac, feminine furniture, and perfume. When Martha suddenly dies, the surviving sisters are forced to assist Pauline probably for the first time in their adult lives.
This Belgium movie was a popular title at film festivals when it was first released and among it's rewards was bringing two of the grande dames of Belgium cinema to international attention - Dora van der Groen as Pauline and Ann Petersen as Paulette, both of them about 73 when the film was released although playing sixty-something. van der Groen is amazing as the childlike Pauline but Petersen has many wonderful moments too as the prententious but not unfeeling Paulette. To me the film's most stunning moment is when the curtain comes down after Paulette's swan song at the operetta and she finds herself quite alone on the stage, her little dream world revealed for the plastic fantasy it was. This was sadly Petersen's final film, she passed away in 2003.
Director Lieven Debrauwer has a fine sense of human emotions and the movie is beautifully photographed, vividly capturing Paulette's gift-wrapped world and Pauline's austeure existance. The movie also sharply portrays the hostile unkindness the mentally-changed often face, here from a belittling butcher clerk and Cecile's self-centered boyfriend. The ending is perhaps unsatisfying to general American tastes with it's meloncholy, slightly unresolved ending but then the movie was not meant to be a Hallmark card. Director Debrauwer does a very good job in his first feature film, after several short subjects (three of them starring van der Groen and one regrets they are not here as bonus features on the DVD) and his commentary on the DVD is pleasant. I recommend this film to those who enjoy slightly sentimental films, you will certainly be moved.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Pauline & Paulette
Added 2/4/2009
I saw this movie on Direct TV and I had to have it.its amazing how the director was able to create the mood, tenderness and the seriousness of what happens in the family..Pauline will tear at your heart as will Paulette..its a movies you will want to share with family and friends and watch it everytime with them and enjoy like the first time.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Two great actresses collide and converge in PAULINE and PAULETTE
Added 10/6/2007
Any film viewer who cherishes a well done story and relishes delicious acting from two great actresses needs to take a long and hard look at PAULINE ET PAULETTE.Belgian veteran dames Dora van der Groen and Ann Petersen shared best actress award for this sensitive,comical and heart-wrenching story of two sisters,one who is mentally-challenged and one who is challenged-mentally.Pauline (van der Groen who has ANTONIA's LINE and VILLA des ROSES to her long credits) has the mental capacity of a child.When her caretaker dies,sister Paulette (Petersen) is forced to have Pauline stay with her.Pauline is an innocent who needs everything just her way;Paulette is also set in her ways as a lingerie shopkeeper and an amateur opera singer.Pauline, childlike, adores her older sister.Paulette cannot be bothered with the intruding annoyance of her simple-minded sister.Paulette packs Pauline off to live with their younger sister Cecile and her French boyfriend,but Pauline WANTS Paulette,so back she comes.The hilarity never lets up and the timing of two magnificent pros with a sharp and clever script clocking in at a perfect 73 minutes is irresistible as a supreme example of a film sharply focused,trimmed of excess fat and served up for a great viewing experience.
For those not familiar with Belgian film,PAULINE ET PAULETTE is a first rate introduction to the world of the European character-driven,actor par excellent movie.Along with films such as DAENS, ANTONIA'S LINE,THE OX,GOOD EVENING MR.WALLENBERG,ELLING,BLACK BOOK,CHARACTER and EMMA'S SHADOW Flemish cinema is the still, IMO ,undiscovered treasure of moviedom.Folks that enjoy reading will enjoy the well paced,character-filled screenplays of Belgian movies.
On VHS and DVD, PAULINE ET PAULETTE is a bargain for such rich entertainment.IT is in Flemish with very readable subtitles.(You won't even realize that it is foreign after a few minutes)
Great companion films that feature a pair of great acting jobs would be LADIES IN LAVENDER (Judi Dench and Maggie Smith),NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett) and IRIS (Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent).
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Pauline and Paulette
Added 7/23/2007
Sensitive and humane, but never saccharine, Debrauwer's witty, touching portrait of four sisters avoids all the clichés one expects in depictions of mental disability. Groen (star of "Antonia's Line") is a marvel playing the childlike Paulette, a limited, sweet-natured woman whose capacities for understanding are greater than others suppose. Meanwhile Pauline and Cecile puzzle over how they can place her in an institution without losing their inheritance--a condition of Martha's will. With its wry, delicate observations of a family in crisis, "Pauline and Paulette" will stealthily win your heart.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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