Critic Reviews

The film’s about a chapter we prefer to get out of the way in adolescence; revisited as this kind of helpless mid-life crisis, it’s exquisite torture.

In sensual romantic drama Simple Passion, Lebanese-born director Danielle Arbid captures viscerally that peculiar detachment that comes from romantic and sexual infatuation.

Yes, there is a lack of real substance throughout Simple Passion, but the sex manages to fill that void to a degree and keep the film afloat.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

While Dosch’s work is ever-changing but always accessible, Polunin never comes close to matching her acting ability, which ultimately leaves “Simple Passion” lacking.

An imperfect but glassily compelling study of obsessive, finally debilitating desire that honors its source with an unblinking female gaze.

Dosch brings a wonderful humanity and sensitivity to the role.

Although the pleasures of the flesh are shown with enough erotic power to convince us of Hélène's addiction to them, the anonymity of the lead characters stops the film from truly gripping. 

There is potential to say so much more about sex, love, partnership, feminism and shifting sexual mores across cultures, but Simple Passion lets the bodies do the talking, and after a while, they run out of things to say.

While keeping a stalwart female perspective, Simple Passion follows an arc so standard it could be called banal.