smoke0 The story is challenging, lurid and sordid, demanding a great modern film adaptation, but this one is just dull, dim and lifeless. No amount of scenery chewing can save it. Read the book and wait for a better film.

ggmcheartagram I thought from the trailer that this was going to be a very passionate tale about a girl stuck with a horrific husband who falls for his best friend and a murder is then committed and covered up but that we would still be rooting for the lovers. Now that was pretty much what it was about but i just expected a lot more passion than there actually was and her husband wasn't horrific at all he was actually a really nice guy who is very unwell. Now i did feel for Therese getting stuck with marrying her sickly cousin but the outcome was undeserved and rather sad but yeah i know that is the point and that is the reason the story goes where it goes, however I definitely didn't end up rooting for the lovers. They actually ended up really annoying me when their relationship turned so quickly. The film did manage to powerfully support the saying 'be careful what you wish for' though. I won't lie, i mostly just watched this for Oscar Isacc and yes he is good as usual but also a bit bland as is Elizabeth Olson. Jessica Lange started off well but she then started overacting just like she did during her last stint on American Horror Story, Shirley Henderson was also very irritating. Definitely worth a watch though if you enjoy period dramas but this probably won't be one that i revisit. I will however be reading the book at some point in the hope of finding the passion that i expected to be present.

SnoopyStyle Thérèse Raquin (Elizabeth Olsen) is left by her father to live with his sister (Jessica Lange). Her hope of his return is lost when he's reported dead. She is pushed to marry her sickly cousin Camille (Tom Felton) by her domineering aunt. Camille finds a clerical job in Paris and the three of them move to the city. They buy a dusty shop and Thérèse is stuck behind the counters at the empty shop. She falls for Camille's new work friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac) who also paints. They quickly have an affair. However their secret affair is threatened when Camille decides to move back to the country.It's a rather dull costume drama for the first half hour. Everything is dim and cold. Olsen needs some more opportunity to do something. When she pretended to be a bear, it was a flash of something great. The movie seems to be filled with possible great moments that are quickly engulfed by the movie's overwhelming blackness and whispers. It's an old romance novel of corset ripping without any great charm.When the movie changes to a murder thriller, it picks up some energy but nothing that truly takes off. The prodding darkness keeps clawing it back to lifelessness. I never really fell in love with the couple. Lange is masterful at times but the movie is generally lifeless. It tries to be a nightmarish Hitchcockian thriller but director Charlie Stratton doesn't have the skills.

Neil Welch In 19th century France, Therese is sent to live with her aunt and her cousin, sickly mummy's boy Camille. On reaching adulthood, her aunt marries Therese off to Camille and they move to Paris. There, Camille meets childhood friend Laurent who embarks on a passionate and forbidden affair with Therese which culminates in them wishing to be rid of Camille.If Therese had only had TV, she would have watched enough to know that this sort of thing never ends well. Emile Zola's 1867 novel Therese Raquin, retitled here, may have suffered in that characters who should be unsympathetic turn out to be quite likable and rather sad. Therese (Elizabeth Olsen) trapped into a life she doesn't like by a domineering aunt, understandably turns to an affair with wild abandon as it brings her joys she has never known. Tom Felton, not someone whose work as a child actor has appealed to me, is turning out to be quite good as an adult: he makes Camille into someone whose failings are not his fault (although I think he could have gone for a better haircut. I digress). Jessica Lange, on the basis of this film, is not ageing particularly attractively, but has become an actress of a stature one would not have expected from the 1976 King Kong: her overbearing mother/aunt, while not sympathetic to start off with, suffers terribly in more ways than one, and you end up feeling sorry for her. Only Laurent (Oscar Isaac) doesn't seem to have much in the way of redeeming qualities other than being a) hot and b) a good painter. I suspect that this may not be what Zola intended.This film is lushly photographed, and contains good supporting performances from assorted unexpected British actors.I have to finish with a "but" - but it's not much fun, not that tragedies ever are. It's all a bit glum and - importantly - not very uplifting (Les Miserables was glum, but left you feeling that there is something redemptive in human potential - that's not the case here, I'm afraid). So this is good, of its sort, but I can't say I came out of it feeling particularly enriched by it.