Love Forbidden

Ultimately involves a highly contrived, melodramatic ending that wouldn't have been out of place in a '40s-era film noir.

The result is rather like eavesdropping on a bright but painfully self-absorbed adolescent's secret thoughts: sometimes fascinating, other times just infuriating.

A model French psychological drama in which very little action occurs but feelings and intuitions are documented with precision and discretion.

Torpid, academic vanity project for helmer-thesp Rodolphe Marconi.

Cryptic, pseudo-poetic asides come across as merely pretentious: Repeated cutaways to statues will not make your film "Contempt," nor will fleeting references to serial killers make it "Don't Look Now."