Popular reviews

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  Review by kmeaston ★★★

  Young, mustachioed Jeremy Irons is a very fetching Frenchman, indeed.

  In contrast, middle-aged mustachioed Alain Delon looks like he's auditioning for a Sgt. Pepper's cover band.

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  Review by meg 🎁 ★★★★½

  not to be crude but young jeremy irons can have his way with me

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  Review by M Garcia ★★½ 5

  i dont know why everyone in the 80s/90s thought casting jeremy irons in sexy/erotic roles was a good idea.. but.. it wasnt....

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  Review by Zane Timonina 1

  Considering that Proust's work resists adaptation, Swann in Love is a solid effort throughout. But it's a bloody shame that Luchino Visconti's four hour version of Proust’s seven-volume novel never made it to the screen. Delon, Brando, Berger, Rampling, Bardot and even Greta Garbo were rumored to have joined Visconti's ambitious project. Could have been a landmark in film history.

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  Review by phengwen ★★★ 3

  Have you read Proust or haven't you? Proust Proust Proust Proust Proust Proust Proust. But what about. Volker Schlöndorff? Also, the late Jean-Claude Carrière? A good movie can't be a book. It's better for everyone to know that. I liked this movie although Schlöndorff called it a failure of adaptation (www.asymptotejournal.com/nonfiction/volker-schlondorff-on-literature-and-film/). Swann is really delirious and egoistic here; most other things like friends, art, and bodily care fall to the wayside in his neurotic pursuit of Odette. Is he searching for the lost time? NO!

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  Review by Francesca de Rochefort ★★

  Schlondorff's attempt to adapt the first volume of Proust's gargantuan In Remembrace of Things Past is a mixed result; possibly it's just me comparing it against Ruiz's Time Regained which through its quite free and stream-of-consciousness condensation of the entire novel cycle is a masterpiece that managed to create something approaching an actual Proustian cinema of sorts, something I thought should be impossible - here we instead get a glossy all-star attempt at telling a story of obsessive passion which definitely has its attractions even if it's fairly staid and unadventurous by comparison and feels like a whirlwind tour around the basic plot without really exploring the central themes with much depth. Alain Delon's evocation of the catty Baron de Charlus is very entertaining though whenever he crops up and decides to steal a scene. Wish I looked like Fanny Ardant does in this film, that red dress she wears is iconic.

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  Review by Jesse

  Distilling Swann’s entire narrative—as well as miscellaneous elements from across the entire Recherche—into the frenzied events of a single day is a more Proustian gesture than it might seem at first glance, probably because the compression comes at the expense of poetry. And what is Proust without poetic reverie? Not much—or at least not much that distinguishes it from any other generic period costume drama (it would be several more decades before Raúl Ruiz would devise a much more effective means of approximating Proust with the masterful Le Temps retrouvé.) But judged by more modest expectations there are plenty of individual elements to savor: Ornella Muti is a wonderful Odette, Nykvist’s cinematography is exquisite, and then there’s the thrill of the red ball gown. A minor pleasure—even while acknowledging that’s not nearly enough.

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  Review by dmitry mcdmitry

  Marcel Proust, I'm so sorry honey!!

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  Review by Pouria

  Those unfamiliar with the novel will miss a lot of context that made it great in the first place. It'll be a subpar experience, though not too confusing.

  A minor example: Oriane tells Swann "life is a dreadful business", to which Swann replies "dreadful". In the novel we learn what caused Swann (once an optimist who was now filled with jealousy and pessimism towards life and friends) to agree with Oriane, is that her remark comforted him as if she had a shared understanding of Swann's situation with Odette. This omniscient narrator is missing from the film. That's fine, but it fails to convey what occurred in Swann's mind through image. What else is left to see and experience? Not a whole lot.

  Watching Swann in Love felt like perceiving a stream of unenjoyable references to a work which I admire.

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  Review by theodora ★★★

  idk if it's bc swann's way is one of my favorite books and i had higher expectations for an adaptation or this film lacks something but i did not really enjoy this. also i don't think someone who hasn't read the book would understand half of what's going on lmao

  but still i'm giving it a three star bc i like the fact that they at least tried, given that this book is impossible to adapt

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  Review by peregosha ★★

  i wish it was rather 2 hours of empty belle époque interiors

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  Review by Lenka73 ★★★

  If you think to titles just like Time Regained by Raoul Ruiz or La Captive by Chantal Ackerman, the idea it’s impossible to film the world of Marcel Proust has faded away through the years but in 1984, after some very ambitious attempts by directors such as Luchino Visconti (who was very passionately attached to the project) or Joseph Losey were clamorously shelved, to make a film based upon La Recherche, one of the nineteenth century’s indisputable literary masterpieces, was considered a real challenge. Volker Schlöndorff, a celebrate author of New German Cinema, accepted the task, soon after having scored a noteworthy goal, The Tin Drum (based upon Gunther Grass’s most famous novel, there’s actually a lot of literature in…