Brownian Movement

Brownian motion or pedesis (from Ancient Greek: πήδησις /pέːdεːsis/ "leaping") is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid (a liquid or a gas) resulting from their collision with the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the gas or liquid.- Wikipedia - Its a particle's seemingly random motion caused by its interaction with the unseen smaller particles in the surrounding medium - the emphasis being on the unseen. The lead actress is reacting to the unseen - metaphysical - particles, souls, elements of her surrounding environment. She can not express what motivates her behavior because she does not know what motivates her behavior. Spoiler - An ironic moment comes when her administrative judges tell her that she is not conscious enough of her own motivations to continue ethically practicing medicine - when in fact she is probably more conscious than they are. The director did an excellent job expressing this dichotomy between the emotional drives we are aware of and the ones we aren't; and the problems this poses for any relationship. [In effect the director did a great job illustrating in real terms Brownian motion] I thought both lead actors were great. I sure as heck would not judge them based on their appearance [nor would I judge the appearance of her sexual partners or their actions], as one reviewer here did, as this runs contrary to the intended theme of the movie - appearance is illusionary.

I have watched plenty of foreign and independent films. This one started slow but with promise. But I stopped it around 22 minutes in. The second casual sex scene that turns creepy. Woman is completely naked on the bed while the man is fully winter dressed on top of her. I paused it to get some refreshments and when I came back the freeze frame looked like a rape scene. And then as I continued to watch, the man takes the wet goo from his or her genitalia and lets her smell it from his hand, then does it again but this time smears it in her face. The whole time this done very slowly with the only sound being a moist liquid sound. The whole 22 minutes that I watched had very little dialogue, very little sound, and excruciatingly slow. Slow rape, NO THANK YOU.

Hard to pin it down, but just not very interesting. The actors held intense silences very well, but not really enough plots or insight into who they were to make much of their silences. And there coming together is more endurance than even a hint of insight into why she engaged in strange sexual relations with patients. I imagine if there was a book of this movie it would be explained, but in a movie we need dialogue since there is no narrator. Sure, we see the pain and confusion, but the only dialogue is the most basic human communication of difficulty and heartache with no texture, nuance or depth. The actors did the best they could with it, Kafka would be proud, ala the vacuous emotions that had few edges and less depth. It had potential in holding the tension, but no climaxes, no engagement, not meaning worth pursuing other than the necessity of putting one foot in front of the other. Perhaps if the goal was to represent bleakness it succeeded.

This is a slow-moving and thoughtful film. To all appearances Charlotte is a normal happy professional who is a loving wife and giving mother. She, however, is leading a double life. A second life that consists of rendezvous with unappealing male patients she has just met at her medical clinic. She willingly submits to odd appetites of these strangers. We don't know why she persists in this risky behavior, and when she is caught out and must face these questions in therapy it seems the pain of it all is too much. So, will Charlotte get at the root of what drives her actions, maybe something awful in her early life that has boiled up in this seamy behavior? Will the relationship with her husband have a chance, and will she have peace if she doesn't probe deeply in therapy for answers--or will she gloss over it all? Stay tuned.

The leading lady Sandra Huller gives a superb performance. She has a very compelling presence, and I hope to see her in more movies. However, it seems that about 70% or more of this film is watching as Sandra is lost in thought, and we have no way of knowing what her thoughts are, so the movie made no sense to me. No story basically. If not for the reviews I would have no idea what the basic story line is. The viewer is left with no idea what her motives are. And the actor cast as her husband seemed to me to be badly cast, in that he did not look nor act in a way that gave me the sense that they were a couple; he looks more like a pretty boy model, and just does not look like a marriage match to her. He did not come across as any kind of intellectual either, which would be more of a match to her character. It just did not strike me as a believable match. I thought I might read the book this movie was made from, in order to learn what the movie is about, but apparently no such book exists.

I guess it would be editing when the actor turns into the tunnel leading to her home (we know this because we earlier saw her leave via the same pathway), takes 5 or 6 of the 25-30 steps toward her destination and then she just appears inside. I really liked this technique as it is something I had never been aware of in any film before. This technique on the banal things in life gave time to extend the scenes of things that are quite out of the ordinary.Like one other commenter I also fell asleep during a few of the static scenes and before halfway through I realized that those scenes were all probably going to continue being like that and just started hitting the 10 second advance circle on the screen. But also about the long static scenes, the topic of the film is not something that moves/changes quickly (unless maybe one of the characters is a violent ragging homicidal maniac and then the film can be quickly wrapped up with one well placed bullet).There are a whelming (it means the same thing as overwhelming) number of one star comments but I say watch it for yourself, with the knowledge that several scenes are unusually long with limited movement, monologue or dialogue.