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The Guardians review: a cruel betrayal on the home front

In Xavier Beauvois’s beautiful new film, Nathalie Baye is magnificent as the matriarch overseeing home and harvest during the First World War, while her son falls for her new farmhand Francine.

Updated: 13 October 2020

Iris Bry as Francine in The Guardians

The opening images of Xavier Beauvois ’s The Guardians present two views of the cruelty of war. On either side of a card announcing the year as 1915 are two shots, presumably from two separate regions of France but by implication simultaneous. The first is a group of fallen soldiers, faceless behind their gas marks and immobile on the earth. The second is an elegant wide shot of farmland, with a grey-haired woman driving a horse-drawn plough. While the horrors of the battlefield will impinge on this home-front drama, through letters and dreams, Beauvois’s film will not veer so close to combat again. The guardians of the title are the women who tend the earth during the agonising absence of their menfolk. It’s a truism that the war changes a man, but in The Guardians it leaves deep mental scars on women, too.

France/Switzerland/Monaco/Belgium 2017 Certificate 15; 135m 11s

Director Xavier Beauvois

Cast Hortense Nathalie Baye Francine Iris Bry Solange Laura Smet Georges Cyril Descours Henri Xavier Maly

[2.35:1] Subtitles

Original French title Les Gardiennes UK release date 17 August 2018 Distributor Curzon Artificial Eye curzonartificialeye.com/the-guardians ►  Trailer

The grey-haired woman is Hortense ( Nathalie Baye ), running the family farm with her daughter Solange (Baye’s own daughter Laura Smet ) while her two sons Constant and Georges and son-in-law Clovis are fighting in the Great War. Her husband Henri, fidgeting with his gnarled arthritic hands and applying his technical know-how only to his still and the production of wine-soup, is a shadow of a patriarch, and takes no part in either the farm labour or management. Henri is played evocatively, and tersely, by Gilbert Bonneau, a 78-year-old former farmer who answered an open casting call. The story of The Guardians concerns the arrival of orphan Francine (the debut of another street-cast amateur, Iris Bry), a maid who will share the burden of the farm work. She’s a strong, capable worker and well liked by the family – especially Hortense’s son Georges (Cyril Descours) during his visits home on leave – even if she is underappreciated by them.

The film is based on the novel by Ernest Pérochon, a schoolteacher who himself served at the front during World War I. The novelist’s experience may influence an early, haunting scene in the film, in which Constant returns on leave to his old workplace, the classroom, and suddenly finds it impossible to speak to the expectant innocents sitting in front of him. Producer Sylvie Pialat gave the novel, which has never been translated into English and which was a favourite of her grandfather’s, to Beauvois to adapt. In the years since his last films, The Price of Fame (2014) and the award-winning Of Gods and Men (2010), The Guardians appears to have been a labour of love for both producer and director.

It’s a betrayal in the domestic realm, rather than the tragedies reported from the front line, that forms the crisis of the drama – an act of treachery that constitutes a war crime within the women’s world of work, grief and preparations for peace. Repeated images of women labouring, the changing of the seasons, the devastating appearance of an official bringing news from the trenches all prolong the film’s generous running time. While it covers five years, with each changing date marked diligently by intertitles, the scope of The Guardians may seem perversely intimate, given the backdrop of global events. However, the betrayal, when it comes, is driven by a desire to preserve land and status, to control a lineage – reasons that have caused many a state to enter into armed conflict or negotiate mercilessly in its aftermath.

Nathalie Baye as Hortense and Cyril Descours as Georges

The Guardians is also an unignorably beautiful film, bursting with Caroline Champetier ’s painterly and serene compositions of the fields and forests soaking in mist or illuminated by golden early evening sunlight. While these beguiling images risk accusations of prettification, of glossing over the deprivations of wartime with luscious photography of the Haute-Vienne landscape, they could also be taken as an invitation for further scrutiny. Look more closely at the scenes and it’s clear that what makes them so picturesque is also what makes them so pitiful. That there are young women working in the fields, with their long skirts brushing the grass, is a sign that the men are away at war, and the ‘guardians’ must perform a double labour, of raising both children and crops, often without the physical strength or tools they need.

Most powerfully, these women are shown hacking neatly at the haystalks with hand scythes in one extended and especially elegant tracking shot of the harvest. It’s a testament not to rustic charm but to the poverty of the farm-owners, who must cleave to 19th-century methods until they can afford modern mechanised solutions – such as the ones Constant reports seeing at the front, where the machine age is reaping its own crops. While Hortense and Solange may yet find the wherewithal to modernise the farm, they remain mired in an older way of life, awaiting the men to take up the reins again, and approve their improvements. Francine, forced into a corner by circumstances, is the only character who learns how to modernise herself, facing the 1920s with a new outlook, not to mention a chic appearance.

Even the attractive chalk-blue paint that brightens the woodwork of the cottages and farm buildings echoes the uniforms of the soldiers, who carry the injuries and horrors of battle with them. It’s a horror that is ever-present even miles away from the action. When the workers pause to eat in the middle of the day, the beauty drains from the screen as, without the distraction of their labours, they fall silent, glum, exhausted and lost in thought. Solange compares the agony of awaiting her husband’s return to living in a bad dream, a psychological torture.

Laura Smet as Solange

The film has such a nuanced relationship with cinematic beauty that what is seen and what is hidden within the image are equally important – as when Francine and Georges make love discreetly behind a boulder but are betrayed by an untouched picnic basket lying a few steps away. Prettiness itself is implicitly a trap, encouraging a dangerous intimacy and comfort. It’s when peaceably moulding butter pats with floral motifs that Hortense and Francine become close, and make plans for the future. It’s a moment of fleeting happiness and confidence that is crushed by two subsequent brutal blows from the front, and it exacerbates the agony of what lies ahead for Francine. Such rushes of emotion are to be feared. Michel Legrand ’s score appears on only a handful of occasions, bursts of music that underline a moment of expectation, as when Francine first arrives at the farm, or wash over a terrible sorrow, such as Hortense’s reaction to the death of her son. Francine provides much of the film’s music herself, singing sweetly old-fashioned songs around the farm.

Although newcomer Bry is a captivating presence, doing an impressive job of carrying much of the film and its emotional weight, and Smet broods powerfully as the tormented Solange, this is unmistakably Baye’s film. As the magnificent Hortense, she conveys the isolation of her position and her grief as a bereaved mother exquisitely, with a steady gaze and a trembling frame. And when the mood of the film turns, she turns with it – her role deepening to accommodate both Hortense’s pragmatic inflexibility and her terrible regret.

As the priest says, at one gloomy Mass where the names of the latest war dead are declaimed to a congregation of stricken women, we should “take pity on those who weep”. The Guardians is a rewarding and rich film, which offers a delicately considered and often troubling insight into the lives of those left behind by history: those who, in the priest’s words, “still drain the bitter cup of life” while others march to their death.

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THE GUARDIANS (2018) review

written by: Xavier Beauvois, Marie-Julie Maille and Frédérique Moreau (screenplay) & Ernest Pérochon (novel) produced by: Sylvie Pialat and Benoît Quainon directed by: Xavier Beauvois rated: R (for some violence and sexuality) runtime: 138 min. U.S. release date: May 25, 2018 (Music Box Theatre, Chicago, IL)

“Well, Pa, a woman can change better’n a man. A man lives sorta – well, in jerks. Baby’s born or somebody dies, and that’s a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that’s a jerk. With a woman, it’s all in one flow, like a stream – little eddies and waterfalls – but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it thata way.”

That’s a poignant line from Ma Joad, concerned mother of Henry Fonda’s Tom Joad in John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, played with great emotional impact by Jane Darwell, who would go on to win an Best Supporting Actress Oscar the following year. I recently saw Ford’s 1940 classic for the first time. The adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel happened to be on TCM and knowing it was on my blind spot film list, I saw no good reason to leave the couch. To say I was rewarded is putting it lightly. I thought about that dialogue and the woman who said it after viewing the “The Guardians”, the latest film from French writer/director Xavier Beauvois, which is a showcase for hard-working women of a certain era. Coincidentally, both films are adaptations of novels and feature strong and resilient women.

The film opens in 1915, taking place on and around the Paridier farm in the French countryside, spanning roughly four years as the story unfolds. While the men of a certain age are off fighting in The Great War, the women must fend for themselves and maintain the home and land each family owns. The Sandrail family is one such family, in which matriarch Hortense ( Nathalie Baye ) must tend to the workload of her family’s farm with her two sons, Constant and Georges and her son-in-law, Clovis are off at war. She is assisted by her daughter, Solange ( Laura Smet ), but the workload is becoming overwhelming for just the two of them. With the fall harvest looming, Hortense turns to the local bank for help and she is given a orphaned teenager, Francine ( Iris Bry ), to hire and help with the daily tasks. This turns out to be beneficial to Hortense and her family as well as Francine, since the quiet young woman causes no trouble and is a hard worker.

If “The Guardians” (“Les Gardiennes”, in French) focused solely on the women, it would be just fine, but it’s more interesting when certain men are included, but at the same time the inclusion of these men provide the film with some of its flimsiest characterizations. We meet Hortense’s sons and Solange’s husband when they come home on leave and, as expected, a couple of them are shell-shocked, one more than the other, while the other uses some old school moves on the new hire. We’re not with these men long, but they definitely serve their purpose – adding dimensions to the women who are closest to them (or at least supposed to be), providing a more rewarding portrayal of these strong female characters.

The most interesting of the men is the first one we meet, Hortense’s firstborn, Constant ( Nicolas Giraud ), who was the town’s schoolteacher. He is definitely a little shaken from the war, appearing numb as he visits his students at the school house. His mother and sister are happy to have him back, but feel the foreboding grief of knowing that he’ll have to return. Clovis ( Olivier Rabourdin ) seems much more withdrawn and unlike himself – as a young preteen girl and family friend, Margueritte ( Mathilde Viseux ), observes at dinner – who rambles on about how the Germans “are just like us” and appears emotionally impotent around his wife, Solange. Then there’s Hortense’s youngest, the dreamy Georges ( Cyril Descours ) who takes an immediate liking to the red-haired, fair-skinned Francine – understandably so, considering she is something new and different to a place he is familiar with.

During his short time there, Georges tries some eye-rolling cliched lines on Francine, like ““I’m leaving  tomorrow . I may not come back” and even promises to take her to his favorite part of the woods. I guess such behavior would be tolerable, if Georges came across like a naive, pure-hearted kind young man, but he seems a little off actually. When he first encounters Francine, he walks up to her and just stares at her and then asks her if he intimidates her. Huh? For some reason, that line from author Margaret Atwood came to mind – “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Woman are afraid that men will kill them” – came to mind after that initial interaction, which is why it was hard for me to believe the love affair that Georges and Francine embark on. They get to know each other after he’s joined his fellow soldiers by way of letters over a period of months. Hortense has offered to keep Francine in her employment due to her devoted service and the fact that she’s become like another family member – or so we (and Francine) think.

As we’ve come to know by way of social media or internet communication, writing your thoughts and feelings is much different than presenting them and expressing them in person. On paper, Francine and Georges are able to take their time and write what’s on their heart, sometimes as a source of encouragement and other times an opportunity for inner confessions. Beauvois provides an inner monologue for Francine while she writes to Georges, so we mostly hear her voice while she writes. This is a bit of hindrance when it comes to truly believing that something is developing between both of them equally. So, when Georges finally returns for an extended stay, he barely shows any sign of a man who is willing and ready to accept Francine’s heart, but rather a guy opening to getting under her skirt.

I may never have been sold on what Francine sees in Georges, but at the same time, I understand her situation. She’s an orphan, unknown to many and here’s this family who’s given her employment and then the hunky son of her boss takes an interest in her. She falls in love. Has she fallen in love with him or the idea of someone wanting her? I get, but I don’t necessarily like it. Maybe she sees in him someone she thinks she needs, rather than who he truly is. There’s also the idea of Francine offering a lifeline to Georges through these letters, something she agrees to do, which becomes a kind of well-intended service, maybe even an outlet, that she provides. It’s her nature, after all, to serve.

“The Guardians” is at its best during its first hour, especially before Georges comes home for that extended stay. Beavois takes his time getting viewers acclimated to the environment, often just steadied on what the women are doing on the farm (inside or outside), rarely included a montage of farm work scenes, providing a sense of who they are while addressing what they are committed to in their day-to-day life. It helps to spend so much time watching them harvest wheat by hand (using sickles or scythes) and bundling them into sheaves, because we’re much more invested when we see the elated response from the women when a new tractor is purchased to make their job easier and more efficient. Never would I have thought that flipping through a couple pages of a tractor catalog by candlelight could be so exciting, but when you see how desperate these women are for a little relief, it seems quite fitting.

Much like the way in which Ford gives us a strong and resilient Ma Joad throughout “The Grapes of Wrath”, the women of the Paridier farm, Beauvois places the quiet strength and resilience of Hortense, Solange and Francine front and center. He patiently spends time getting to who they are and what they do, often just by having cinematographer Caroline Champetier (who lensed “Holy Motors” and Beauvois’ “Of Gods and Men”) follow the woman – as if they are being studied, watching them toil away in the wheat fields, milking cows in the morning and sprinkling seeds in the cultivated earth in the evening. The work has to get done or their family won’t get fed and the bank will take their property. Who else is going to do the work? What choice do these women have?

It’s also telling and haunting to see how the film opens…the camera pans across a misty war-torn World War I battlefield where dozens of lifeless men are strewn about like discarded action figures. It’s telling because the rest of the movie focused on the families of these men and where they came from and it makes you think about how any of these men could be the son, brother or husband of these hard-working women back home, which is one of the reasons that makes such a scene so haunting.

What occurs in the second half of the film feels less authentic and natural than what came before it and that’s wholly due to the storyline, not the performances. The performances from the three women – Nathalie Baye, Laura Smet and newcomer Iris Bry are solid throughout – but what is ultimately required of their characters isn’t as satisfying as one hopes after investing in who they are. They become victims of unfortunate misconceptions and Hortense in particular responds poorly even though she’s acting to “protect the family”. I didn’t care for where the story was going here, especially when there’s a missed opportunity for a woman to stand up for another woman.

Maybe the film’s second half and conclusion are in the 1924 novel by award-winning French author Ernest Pérochon, but I feel like it ultimately suffers slightly from a predictable storyline. The screenwriters really miss out on a chance to rise above tired expectations at this point in the film. There’s also some odd choices made in the second half of “The Guardians”. I’ll give them credit for wedging in a vivid post-traumatic nightmare that Georges experiences into the storyline, where he single handedly takes out a group of gas-masked Nazis. It’s an interesting albeit abrupt way to incorporate the emotional toll and mental strain war has on men, but I couldn’t help but feeling this could’ve been shown in subtler ways, especially if it’s going to evoke a key scene with a certain tree on Dagobah from “The Empire Strikes Back”.

Beauvois, who recently showed up in Clare Denis’ “Let the Sunshine In” as a pretty awful suitor of Juliette Binoche, knows a few things about wartime stories after winning big at Cannes with “Of Gods and Men” back in 2010. His painterly approach, attention to detail and focus on who these woman are make “The Guardians” worth viewing, despite some misgivings on how the story concludes.

RATING: ***

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Movie Review: The Guardians (2017)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> June 25, 2018

“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”)” — Wilfred Owen

In his film “Of Gods and Men,” director Xavier Beauvois tells the story of seven Roman Catholic French Trappist monks kidnapped from their monastery in a village in Algeria by radical Islamists during the Algerian Civil War, and the sacrifices that people of good will in both religions were willing to make. Sacrifice is also a theme of Beauvois’ latest film, The Guardians (Les Gardiennes), his first film shot in digital. It is a superbly realized and emotionally engaging film that depicts the strength and courage of the women left behind during World War I when all able-bodied men were fighting in the trenches. A quiet, contemplative film, it is beautifully photographed by Caroline Champetier (“ Holy Motors ”) who captures the bucolic loveliness of the Limousin area of south central France.

Now part of the new region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it is the least populated region of Metropolitan France and most likely has not changed much since the years in which the film takes place. Based on a 1924 novel by war veteran Ernest Pérochon, Beauvois and his co-writers Frédérique Moreau and Marie-Julie Maille gradually reveal the impact of the war on one family whose two sons and son-in-law have left for the front. Supported by a moving score by Michel Legrand (“The Price of Fame”), the film covers a period of five years from 1915 to 1920, the years during and following the Great War in Europe, one that would claim an estimated 45 million military dead and wounded and 7.7 million missing or imprisoned.

The Guardians opens in 1915 in a combat zone where we see the bodies of dead soldiers lying in the mud. The scene abruptly shifts to the Paridier farm in France, a place of quiet beauty that stands in sharp contrast to the heartbreak of the battlefield. It is a difficult time for the farm which is run by widowed matriarch Hortense Sandrail (Nathalie Baye, “ It’s Only the End of the World ”) with the help of her daughter Solange (Baye’s real-life daughter Laura Smet, “Yves Saint-Laurent”) and her elderly father Henri (Gilbert Bonneau). Beauvois shows the heroism of the women furrowing, seeding, harvesting, grinding wheat and taking it to market. It is backbreaking work and will be years before combines and tractors are introduced.

As the men periodically return home on leave, it becomes clear that each of them is damaged in some way. Hortense’s oldest son Constant (Nicolas Giraud, “ Taken ”), a former schoolteacher, tells his mother that he endured, “two years of hell, some people went mad,” and says (without any evidence) that “after the war, it will be different.” Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin, “ My Golden Days ”), Solange’s husband drinks heavily and stands up for the humanity of the Germans (“they are just like us”) in opposition to the feelings of the family and the community. Finally, it is Hortense’s son Georges (Cyril Descours, “Red Sky”) who carries himself with a certain pride and even arrogance.

Frustrated by the need for another person to help her run the farm during the harvest season, Hortense hires Francine, a twenty-year-old auburn-haired orphan, remarkably performed by newcomer Iris Bry. In addition to the chores, Hortense must contend with some rowdy American soldiers stationed in the village awaiting their orders, while looking after Marguerite (Mathilde Viseux), Clovis’s daughter from his first marriage. Complications arise when Francine and George fall in love, much to the chagrin of the much younger Marguerite, assumed to be the girl that George would marry. The friction between members of the family forms the centerpiece of the film and Beauvois weaves a complex and unpredictable story without resorting to melodrama.

Unfortunately, when the town’s rumor mill goes into high gear spreading all kinds of rumors, Francine’s future is left on shaky ground. Even more disturbing is the sad news from the front delivered by a local official who just appears at the door. As events unfold, we are drawn closer to each character, able to relate to their hopes and sorrows as if we have known them all of their lives. Though The Guardians is a film of subtlety and restraint, it is also a work of compelling emotional force and one of the year’s best films.

Tagged: children , France , novel adaptation , relationship , WWI

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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Waterlogged rescue flick is too intense for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his te

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity,

One "f--k" several other profanities (&q

Wild Turkey liquor bottle is visible.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiti

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else…

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An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his team and make hard choices in rescue situations; a lonely veteran swimmer trains youngsters to take up his heroic legacy.

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Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the dangers of Coast Guard rescue-swimming; a rescuer has to punch a hysterical victim; a couple of rescuers die; a helicopter crashes and explodes; a trainer is punched in the nose and bleeds; a couple of barfights with Navy sailors leave Jake (and then Ben) bloodied and bruised; training is hard (in freezing water, holding breath, swimming to the point of exhaustion).

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A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity, including passionate kisses and some playful rolling in bed, wearing underwear and mostly under the covers.

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One "f--k" several other profanities ("damn," "s--t," "a--hole," etc.).

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Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiting; Ben chews Vicodins to kill physical and emotional pain; some cigarette smoking.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else. Sailors and swimmers argue and draw blood in fistfights. A couple falls in love and is shown kissing and in bed (no explicit sex, but tumbling under blankets and some underwear shots). Protagonists drink, take painkillers, and use occasional profanity. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Its okay to let other people in

Another great movie, what's the story.

Kevin Costner stars as Ben Randall, a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer who turns to teaching after a traumatic event leaves him unable to carry on as usual. Ben needs to recover his nerve, while cocky student Jake ( Ashton Kutcher ) learn to play nicely with others, including his girlfriend, Emily (Melissa Sagemiller). Both teacher and student have suffered; the revelations of that suffering lead each to his own sort of manly re-commitment. At the rescue-swimming training facility, Ben's red-lit nightmares are compounded by the fact that his long-suffering wife, Helen (Sela Ward), has left him. He self-medicates and grumps at the recruits, and for 18 weeks, drills his trainees hard. Ben's methods occasionally alarm and annoy his fellow instructors, including resentful second-in-command Jack (Neal McDonough) and skeptical presiding officer Larson (John Heard). During his down time, Ben calls Helen to beg forgiveness and helps Jake avenge a beating he received from disdainful Navy sailors. Though the trainees' ranks do include a woman, the focus here is on boys learning to be men. Ben and Jake see themselves in each other, pretty much to the exclusion of anyone else. When Emily suggests to Jake that Ben may be "trying to push you to be better," Jake sets her straight: "He knows I'm better than he is!"

Is It Any Good?

With a retread plot, plenty of boy-bonding action, and a shirtless Ashton Kutcher, this is a by-the-numbers crowd pleaser that's about as dull as a heroic redemption story could be.

Per formula, parallel redemption stories grant "emotional" moments to both Ben and Kutcher's Jake. By the time Jake has his big breakdown scene (he cries, though he doesn't actually say, "I got nowhere else to go!"), it's clear that, for all their earnest, actorly efforts, neither man has a chance against Ron L. Brinkerhoff's hackneyed script.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about ways to deal with trauma. How does the movie make the case that focusing on the future (in the form of students to be taught and lives to be saved) helps Ben overcome his guilt, anger, and frustration? What are other ways -- both successful and unsuccessful -- that people deal with traumatic events? How do Ben and Jake's similarities (ambition, competitiveness, tragic pasts) make them ideal partners? What other movies have used a similar structure (tough veteran mentors young hot shot)? Families can also discuss the work of the Coast Guard, including the unit's heroic rescues on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 28, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2007
• Cast : Ashton Kutcher , Kevin Costner , Melissa Sagemiller
• Director : Andrew Davis
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 136 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.
• Last updated : November 16, 2023

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The Guardians Movie Review

By Harvey Karten

THE GUARDIANS (Les Gardiennes) Music Box Films Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Director: Xavier Beauvois Screenwriter: Xavier Beauvois, Frédérique Moreau, Marie-Julie Maille, based on the novel by Ernest Pérochon Cast: Nathalie Baye, Laura Smet, Iris Bry, Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Giraud Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/22/18 Opens: May 4, 2018

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm/ After they’ve seen Paree!

The World War I song (1918) does not represent the women doing the farming in France after their men take off for the war. They’re as likely go on a world tour with Maupintour as go to Paris. How ya gonna keep ‘em on the farm? Simple: without their work the land goes kaput, and that’s the last thing these women—call them Rosies the Riverters based on the land rather than in factories—and subtracting a couple of decades.

Xavier Beauvois directs this epic style picture (when he is not performing in an array of other pictures), a man known for his “Of Gods and Men” about Trappist monks in Algeria who must decide whether to stay or leave when that country is threatened by terrorists. By contrast the women in “The Guardians” have no place to go as they must keep up the acreage they own when their men are off to war. “The Guardians” is a women-centric work done in a classical style, lots of long takes so that we in the audience can register the emotions of women who worry daily that their men may not return and who take out their anxieties in part by some awfully hard farm work.

Under the supervision of Hortense (Nathalie Baye), the women get around on horse-drawn wagons when they are not leading oxen to harvest the land. They feed and milk the cows, grind the wheat, and are unable to take advantage of much in the way of modern harvesting machinery—though in one scene an older man demonstrates a coffee-making machine to a group of Americans assigned to the farm while awaiting orders to fight.

As the family matriarch, Hortense is desperate for help but where are the men when you need them? Instead she hires a twenty-year-old pretty orphan, Francine (Iris Bry), discovers that she’s as good as any man in the field, and retains her beyond the harvest season with a one-year contract at forty francs a month. Everything was just fine with this working relationship—though perhaps Francine would be on borrowed time when Hortense begins using tractors and other modern gear—until Francine meets Hortense’s handsome and caring son George (Cyril Descours) who is on leave and pursues her around the farm and later with correspondence. (Early on, Georges tells Francine that he is leaving for the front tomorrow and may never return, which in some American movies serves as a “line” to get some action at home.)

Now and then, women are told that their husbands or sons will never return, the news spread by a man wearing a suit and tie as opposed to the current method here of being greeted by two Marines knocking on the door. The bad news arrives for Hortense who need not see a man in military uniform to know that one of her sons is dead, while later, another woman using Francine’s services is given the same awful message.

A major change occurs when Francine is fired, despite being the best worker that 40 francs a month can buy, a traumatic event for Francine that occurs during the time that Americans, treated here as stereotypical wise guys, are introduced.

This is a film by a male actor-director who apparently knows how to assure us that women are as good as men, the script adapted from Ernest Perochon’s 1924 novel “Les gardiennes frenchz,” which surprisingly is unavailable at Amazon despite the potential tie-in with the film. I can’t say, therefore, that the book is better than the film or vice versa, but given the vistas captured by Caroline Champetier in widescreen lensing, we get at least as good an idea what of farm like was like in Europe during the early part of the 20th Century. At the same time, the long takes gives us in the audience time to concentrate on the emotions of the women on the farm as shown subtly in their expressions. Iris Bry makes her successful debut as a woman troubled by her status as an orphan while Nathalie Baye in the principal role clues us in to the hard life of an older woman with demanding physical work, who must at the same time suffer emotionally when dealing with sons that appear to have P.T.S.D.

Iris Bry performs Alexandre Trébitsch and Harry Fragson’s 1899 song “Les amour fragile” to wrap up the story, looking at first sadly at the plight of young lovers whose passion does not last while at the same time showing us that she has emerged as a strong woman. Give the song a listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvFpY34BHig

Rated R. 138 minutes. © 2018 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B+ Acting – A- Technical – B+ Overall – B+

Harvey Karten is the founder of the The New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO) an organization composed of Internet film critics based in New York City. The group meets once a year, in December, for voting on its annual NYFCO Awards.

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The Guardians

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Release date

17 th August 2018

The Guardians is what some might call a “slow burner”, but it is one that draws in viewers with beautiful imagery, character depictions and emotion. This French masterpiece from renowned filmmaker Xavier Beauvois is certainly one of 2018’s must-watch movies. 

The film follows Hortense Sandrail and her family in the midst of World War One. Whilst her sons and son-in-law leave home to fight on the frontline, Hortense and her daughter Solange (played by real-life mother and daughter Nathalie Baye and Laura Smet) take on the running of the Paridier Farm. With harvest on the horizon, the protagonist employs the help of a young woman, Francine, who fits straight into farm life and works hard with great respect for her job. When Georges – one of the Sandrail sons – comes home on leave and American soldiers set up camp on the farm, things start to become complicated and relationships are put to the test. 

This feature perfectly portrays the trials of home and work life whilst battles are being fought elsewhere. As WW1 rages on, those left at home try to focus on managing rural life. This becomes more difficult throughout the years and unwanted dramas inevitably hit the quiet farm. As the piece twists and turns, viewers experience a level of uncertainty and tension that the characters themselves are forced to live with for many years. 

The wonderful cast – which also includes Iris Bry, Cyril Descours and Olivier Rabourdin – bring each individual to life and captivate the audience with their grit, determination, doubts and emotion. Along with stunning rural scenery depicted in all seasons and simple yet poetic descriptions of wartime life, Beauvois’ latest release is a beautiful snapshot of families and friends trying to get by in desperate times. 

If you’re yet to watch one of 2018’s amazing selection of foreign language films, then be sure to start with  The Guardians.   

Laura Ewing

The Guardians is released in select cinemas on 17 th August 2018.

Watch the trailer for The Guardians here:

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Radical review – Mexico’s heartwarming answer to Dead Poets Society makes the grade

Based on the true story of an inspiring teacher arriving in an impoverished school, this bullies you into uplift but succeeds thanks to its top quality cast

T he expression “feelgood” is usually just an indicator of cheerful and positive content, but don’t forget it also works as an imperative. As in, you better feel good about this movie or its admirers will get very cross and maybe call you names. Such may well be the case with this Mexican comedy-drama about an unorthodox schoolteacher (winningly played by Eugenio Derbez); it is a film that a certain constituency of viewers is going love so passionately that woe betide any who might suggest that it is profoundly manipulative and unabashedly sentimental.

That said, there’s no gainsaying the skills of director Christopher Zalla and the cast, which is why, by the end, Radical earns the tears of bittersweet joy it yanks out from even the grouchiest of grouches. Zalla co-wrote the script with Laura Guadalupe, working from a 2013 Wired article by journalist Joshua Davis about a real-life teacher and his students called A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses.

Despite those based-on-a-true-story bona fides, the script is taut as piano wire, strings of inciting incidents strung like steel cables between concrete coincidences, ironies and tragedy. Derbez’s Sergio arrives at a failing school in border city Matamoros, Mexico , and promptly starts in with the O Captain! My Captain! Dead-Poets-style inspirationalism, inspiring his charges to think for themselves. Naturally this ruffles the feathers of the local authorities, who only care about exam results, as well as the many impoverished parents who need their offspring to finish sixth grade and then come home – in one case to help raise the younger siblings so mom can keep working in a factory and assist at the landfill site where the family earns a living from foraged scrap.

This last situation is the one that dogs serious young Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), but Sergio spots the girl has an extraordinarily beautiful young mind and a natural aptitude for maths. Will he be able to help her stay in school, along with boy-band-cute young Nico (Danilo Guardiola), a kid carrying a torch for Paloma but who is being pressured to join the local criminal gang with whom his brother now runs.

All the outcomes feel pre-ordained, right down to a climactic late arrival at the exam hall. But Zalla refrains from making the musical cues excessively weepy, and there’s enough grit and darkness around the margins to roughen things up. Meanwhile, he gets lovely, just-so performances from the kids: neither too knowing or drama-school pert, but still full of feeling, especially the copiously talented Guardiola.

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Eli roth’s ‘borderlands’: what the critics are saying.

The Lionsgate live-action adaptation of the popular video game stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramirez, Ariana Greenblatt, Gina Gershon and Jamie Lee Curtis.

By Abid Rahman

Abid Rahman

International Editor, Digital

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Lionsgate ‘s Borderlands hits theaters Aug. 9, but the review embargo for the film broke Thursday, and the early reaction from critics has been dire.

A live-action adaptation of Gearbox Software’s popular video game series, Eli Roth ‘s film takes place on the planet Pandora and tells the story of a band of outlaw misfits. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt and Jamie Lee Curtis, with Jack Black providing the voice of a wisecracking robot.

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Below are key excerpts from some of the most prominent early reviews.

In his negative review for The Hollywood Reporter , David Rooney writes that “the big mystery [with Borderlands ] is how such a noisy nothing of a movie landed the stacked cast.” David zeroes in on what went wrong with the film, highlighting big changes during the production. “To be fair, the project for which Blanchett and other major names signed on possibly looked a little different given the number of screenwriting hands it passed through. The most notable of those belonged to Craig Mazin, a co-creator and co-writer of The Last of Us , who reportedly chose to remove his name from the project. The script credit ultimately went to Roth and first-timer Joe Crombie, with speculation that the latter is a pseudonym.”

In a zero stars review in the New York Post , Johnny Oleksinski writes that Borderlands is a serious misstep for an actor of the caliber of Cate Blanchett. “If I was the two-time Oscar winner, I’d hire a crack team to work around the clock to scrub all mention of it from the Internet. The film is that embarrassing,” writes Oleksinski. The critic was not moved on any level, writing that “everything about Borderlands is appalling: the acting, writing, direction, design.”

In his review for The Daily Beast , an exasperated Nick Schager headlines his piece with: “Cate Blanchett, what are you doing?” After a run of great video game adaptations, Schager is confident the streak ends with Borderlands . “Gearbox Software’s games were light on plot and heavy on action, and Roth doubles down on that formula to monotonous results,” writes Schager. “Lacking the emotional depth, narrative creativity, and witty humor of James Gunn’s beloved [ Guardians of the Galaxy ], Roth’s big-budget venture is propelled only by borrowed ideas and stale execution, both of which cause it to crash and burn in spectacular fashion.”

Writing in The New York Times , Amy Nicholson begins her review with questions over the co-writer of Borderlands , suggesting the mess of the film owed much to production problems. Nicholson shies away from excoriating the film totally, but was still left disappointed. “You can see the jokes, but most of them don’t land. Still, there is some neat design work if you squint,” Nicholson writes, adding that Blanchett was one of the few highlights: “The two-time Oscar winner endures the nonsense by carrying herself like a warrior on a kitschy propaganda poster.”

In another mixed review, Collider ‘s Taylor Gates felt Borderlands had some positives, including the performances of Ariana Greenblatt, Jack Black and Jamie Lee Curtis, but ultimately the flaws pull the film down. “ Borderlands is an action-adventure movie at its core, and it undoubtedly delivers on that front. The action — especially the hand-to-hand combat and more acrobatic fight choreography — is a blast,” writes Gates. “The film suffers when it comes to pacing, too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have a movie sit well under two hours — something the majority of films these days don’t seem to do — but the speed at which plotlines get resolved feels rushed instead of efficient, the breakneck pace sacrificing clarity and much-needed tension and stakes.”

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Is Guardian (2018) worth watching?

I've heard that the series suffered some bad special effects plus weak plot and side characters, but that the main duo's story and acting is really good. I've also heard it likened to the campy style of early Doctor Who which I quite enjoyed, but I also care about solid plotlines. 40 episodes is quite long for me, I'm wondering if it's worth the commitment?

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

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The most important things in life happen between the words. Subterranean noise is often louder than dialogue. This is a truth we all experience, but it is challenging to pull off in film, particularly if the subterranean moments are small shifts in consciousness where the character (and audience) understands that nothing will be the same again. A film camera captures thought, and yet so many films seem to distrust this, their air filled with unnecessary dialogue, either exposition or explanation. India Donaldson's "Good One" is extraordinary in so many ways, but its most distinctive quality is how much Donaldson and her trio of actors (James LeGros, Danny McCarthy , and Lily Collias ) trust the subterranean, and allow it to do its work far beneath the surface, between the words.

Chris (Le Gros) and Matt (McCarthy) are lifelong friends, with a relationship like an old bickering married couple. Chris is the responsible one, but his marriage has ended and he's in a state of unwelcome middle-aged upheaval. Matt is a failed actor, openly flailing with disappointment. His teenage son wants nothing to do with him. Chris' 17-year-old daughter Sam (Collias) is a senior in high school, gearing up for college in the fall. She's a good kid and excited about the future. She's looking forward to a weekend hiking trip in the Catskills with her father, Matt, and Matt's son. When Matt's son refuses to go, Sam is without a peer to keep her company. It's too late to back out.

The hike isn't a casual afternoon walk. It's a three-day affair, everyone carrying gear on their backs, hiking long distances over sometimes arduous terrain. Chris and Sam are practiced hikers. They've got all the rituals down. Matt is a buffoon. He's wearing jeans. He packs inappropriately. He can't set up his tent. Chris is rigid and critical. The dynamic between the friends feels like a habit more than anything else. Chris is perpetually irritated with Matt, while Matt cracks jokes. His lightheartedness is a thin veneer placed over misery so deep it's practically existential. "I don't know how I became so untethered," he says in a naked moment.

We see all of this through Sam's eyes. She is perceptive and thoughtful. When the two men ask for her opinion on their grown-up problems, she surprises them with her insight. Something's "off" about all of this, though. Sam is 17 years old, but she's still a kid. These guys are a lot to handle, and one of them is her dad. They forget she's young, they forget that maybe getting tipsy and swapping stories about infidelity isn't something she needs to see. What starts off as a nice time (albeit chaotic with all the bickering) quickly becomes not so nice. In fact, there's a feeling in the air, more and more distinct as the film goes on, that Sam is not safe with these two men she's known all her life.

What happened, though?

"Good One" is intriguing in its disinterest in explanations. The film's refusal to "satisfy" an audience with easy explanations or even cathartic moments pulls you into its atmosphere, dragging you into the weird dynamic which grows more claustrophobic by the moment. Sam has her period and keeps leaving the path to put in a tampon, as Chris and Sam wait in the background, completely oblivious to her extra burden. She's got this whole world going on they have no idea about. The period is an intriguing detail (all the details are intriguing in this beautiful film, including its evocative title), highlighting the biological difference, but also highlighting her isolation. The only women in the movie are back home. Sam is on her own.

I took a friend to the press screening, and we walked home, talking about it the whole way. There was so much to discuss, and I can't help but think it's because what it all "means" is left unsaid. Donaldson does not take the easy way out.

The majority of the film takes place outside. Cinematographer Wilson Cameron (who also directed two of Donaldon's shorts) captures the lush greenery, the way the bodies move through it, the vistas. In some of the more intimate scenes, he utilizes very interesting framing where one head looms in the foreground, and another head peeks out from behind the blockage. The characters are crammed into the frame, but in each others’ way. The sound design is exquisite: the vivid sounds of rushing water, bugs, and birds take the place of dialogue. There are long sequences where we watch the characters hike, set up tents, break down their campsite. The rhythm is soothing, but underneath, things are curdling, shattering.

Most of the film happens on Collias' face. She is an astonishing young actress, where every flicker of thought, discomfort, humor, and shock shows. Her face leads us. The subterranean shift is Sam's, a tectonic plate moving far beneath the surface of her life, marking her indelibly. When Sam exits the forest, she's not the same girl as when she went in. Everything has changed.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Guardians Reviews

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River memorial will honour Fredericton officers killed in 2018 shooting

The guardian will illuminate a pier of the old carleton street bridge in blue each night.

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An illuminated bridge pier in the St. John River will serve as a monument to fallen police officers in Fredericton, according to a plan unveiled by the city Thursday. 

The first look at the plan comes six years after Fredericton police officers Robert Costello and Sara Burns were killed while trying to help Donald Adam Robichaud and Bobbie Lee Wright, who also died in the shooting.

Those events on Aug. 10, 2018, have stuck with Coun. Bruce Grandy's small north side community.

"In that specific community along Douglas Avenue, Oakland Avenue ... that bordered down to the event that happened, you know, they're all affected," he said in an interview. 

Six years after the Fredericton shooting, new memorial honours fallen officers

"They all have feelings that they're dealing with, and the emotions. And you know, over time of course those feelings tend to be less and go on, but people remember what happened there."

Grandy hopes the monument, called The Guardian , and benches on each side of the river will give residents an opportunity for reflection. 

"I think the most important thing — we don't want to forget about that day. It wasn't just the police officers that gave their life, but it affected this whole community," Grandy said.

" The Guardian is meant to reflect on the first responders that gave their lives that day. And not only that but first responders on the whole that have given their lives over time."

When city engineering director Sean Lee suggested using a pier from the old Carleton Street bridge for the monument, Fredericton Police Chief Martin Gaudet said you could hear a pin drop. 

"This memorial is not just a tribute to those who have served and continue to serve, but a beacon of hope and resilience for our entire community," he said.

"Those of us who were here that day, it's forever engrained in our minds."

Blue light will illuminate the pier starting at dusk, Grandy said, and will continue overnight until sunrise. 

He said there's no cost estimate yet for the project, but said it would be approved by council during its fall budgeting process. 

A Fredericton Police Force statement says the monument also serves as a signal of commitment from city police.

"It reminds us that even at times when we are not cognizant of it, police are out there, active, energized, alight, and protecting us," it said. 

"They are our guardians, and this beautiful blue light on a beloved part of Fredericton's history will remind us every night."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Savannah Awde is a reporter with CBC New Brunswick. You can contact her with story ideas at [email protected].

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By Amy Nicholson

In Eli Roth’s “Borderlands,” a cluttered caper flick based on the best-selling video game series of the same name, Cate Blanchett plays a trigger-happy bounty hunter who keeps killing the other characters midsentence before they can fill in the plot. Shoot first, ask questions never — even though the audience has questions of its own: What caused the delay that’s taken this big-budget movie three years to get released? And is it possible that Roth’s credited co-writer, Joe Crombie, who otherwise has no other screenplays or online presence, might be a pseudonym for someone who doesn’t want their real name on this haphazard script?

Like the original first-person shooter game, “Borderlands” is set on a junkyard planet named Pandora that was once a home base for an advanced alien species, but has since been overrun by violent marauders and women with formidable push-up bras. Blanchett’s Lilith was born here and begrudgingly returns under the employ of a tycoon (Edgar Ramírez) who’s hired her to track down his daughter, an unhinged teenager named Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). To Lilith’s annoyance, her one-woman squad swells with new members: a sassy robot (voiced by Jack Black), an autistic xeno-archaeologist (Jamie Lee Curtis), a mostly mute meathead (Florian Munteanu) and a noble soldier (Kevin Hart). When Hart is playing the straight man, you know you’re watching a film that’s throwing everything at the screen.

The style is Chernobyl chic. Anything that can have spikes does have spikes — even the terrain. The scrapheap aesthetic is so maximalist that, at one point, our leads take a joyride in a dumpster. The film itself feels salvaged from the properties it aspires to bowdlerize, chief among them “Star Wars.” Key messages are transmitted as Princess Leia-esque holograms; Black’s robot spouts pessimistic survival statistics; Hart barges onscreen in a gothy Stormtrooper get-up that he immediately discards, sneering, “What a stupid helmet.”

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It Ends With Us review: Adaptation gets to the essence of Colleen Hoover's bestselling book

Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s 2016 New York Times bestseller, It Ends With Us arrives as one of the year’s most anticipated movies — at least for the fans of the novel, and they number in the millions.

Still, you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the source material — nor the saga of its r unaway success on #BookTok — for the movie to resonate.

Warning: This review discusses domestic violence.

An auburn-haired Blake Lively stars as Lily Blossom Bloom, a budding — you guessed it — florist who’s about to open her very first store on a quaint, picture-perfect street in downtown Boston.

Having just returned from her estranged father’s funeral, she’s perched on the rooftop of a high-rise apartment building when she makes the acquaintance of one of its residents, Ryle Kincaid (played by the film’s director, Justin Baldoni), a hunky, menswear-catalogue mannequin who also happens to be a neurosurgeon.

He’s clearly a catch, even if he does make an entrance — in one of the film’s none-too-subtle overtures — by drop-kicking a chair, and point-blank propositioning Lily for sex within moments of their meeting. There’s a spark, but nothing quite comes of it; the attraction is left to simmer.

But it just so happens that Ryle is the brother of Lily’s new shop assistant and confidante Allysa (a typically buoyant Jenny Slate), and so pretty soon the tentative lovers are back in each other’s lives — and arms.

Moving at a dizzy clip, the film whips up a convincing romance between its two leads, laying on the honeyed photography, postcard-pretty locations and montages set to the kind of swoony pop — including a track from Lively’s bestie, Taylor Swift — that conveys the rush of new love. It looks for all the world like an aspirational lifestyle commercial, full of gorgeous people and tasteful, high-end apartments — a fantasy that underlines the precarity of things that can seem a little too good, and too soon.

And as readers of Hoover’s novel will know, it’s very much a deceptively glossy pitch. Behind Ryle’s dreamy facade lies an unprocessed darkness that the film withholds with an effective degree of restraint, although even the uninitiated viewer won’t be entirely convinced by Ryle’s Prince Charming act; there’s something a little too forceful about his affection for Lily, and Baldoni’s performance always seems focused on the narrative endgame.

Ryle’s unravelling is also foreshadowed by a succession of flashbacks, in which the teenage Lily (an excellent Isabela Ferrer, doing an uncanny impression of Lively) bears witness to her abusive father, and befriends a schoolmate, Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), who’s fled his own abusive home environment. These sequences may be heavy-handed, but they’re also tender, and lay the groundwork for the film’s more devastating turn — when the adult Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) reappears in Lily’s life, it’s a cue for Ryle to tighten his grip.

Not having read the book, I can’t say for sure how effectively the film translates its tone, but it seems fair to say that it captures what made the material resonate: a clear insight into the insidious patterns of manipulation in a relationship, and a belief — as the title implies — in the strength it takes to break generational cycles of abuse.

Despite its occasionally contrived plotting and what many might consider an overly neat resolution, the movie goes to some dark places that feel true to the nature of abusive relationships; by nesting its trauma within a sunny, romantic exterior, it manages to catch its audience — like Lily, who’s forced to equivocate Ryle’s ‘accidental’ blows — off guard.

For those who haven’t read the novel, the story’s big emotional twist, if it could be described in those terms, is a moment of real catharsis on screen. It’s a credit to Lively’s underrated talent as a performer that she plays it so subtly, magnifying the dramatic sting.

As a piece of cinema, It Ends With Us isn’t likely to win over any new converts to Hoover’s writing. But whatever its faults, there’s something to be said for the way in which it gets to the essence of its source material, delivering an emotional experience that manages to be both clear-eyed and thorny in its complexity.

If you can accept the material on its own terms, it’s hard not to be moved.

It Ends With Us is in cinemas now.

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‘It Ends with Us’ Review: Blake Lively Stars in a Romantic Soap Opera That Turns Dark and Stays Convincing

Justin Baldoni directs an affecting adaptation of Colleen Hoover's novel and also costars as a romantic suitor too aggro for comfort.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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The film’s star, Blake Lively , has not made the impact in movies that she did on television with “Gossip Girl” (though she had a hit with the shark thriller “The Shallows” and was very good in Ben Affleck’s “The Town” and Oliver Stone’s “Savages”). But in “It Ends with Us,” she has a role she can sink her acting chops into. She fills the screen with her acutely aware and slightly tremulous radiance. She plays Lily Bloom, an aspiring flower-shop entrepreneur who we meet when she returns home for the funeral of her father, who during the eulogy she can’t think of one nice thing to say about (she’s got a list numbered to 5, all left blank). So there’s a forbidding backstory there.

She has bought a beat-up old storefront in the Back Bay, which she renovates and transforms into a flower shop with a lavishly ornate shabby-chic aesthetic. She hires Allysa (played by the always-welcome Jenny Slate), and the two become best buddies. That’s when the first twist happens: Ryle wanders into the store, because it turns out that he’s Allysa’s brother. So he and Lily reconnect, and she agrees, with a great deal of caution, to give him a chance. The way the movie is set up, he’s got to prove himself to her and to the audience.

At the same time, the film flashes back to Lily in  high school (where she’s played by Isabela Ferrer, who matches up with Lively eerily well). There, we see her fall into a relationship with Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), a sensitive classmate she meets when he’s homeless, squatting in an abandoned building across the street from her family’s house. As we learn, he has a good reason to be on the street (symbolized by how he got his scarred hand), and though she helps rescue him, their connection is about something more basic: They click (despite the ridicule she gets from her classmates about it). We wonder: What’s the link between this romance and the one brewing between Lily and Ryle? Is she drawn to bad boys? Outsiders?

Love stories have more or less faded out of mainstream cinema, and it’s gratifying to see one that isn’t a rom-com, for once. As Ryle puts his player ways behind him, we want to see Lily happy, and we think: Maybe this is it. Then, one evening, at a hip eatery, the restaurant’s owner drops by the table, and Lily notices a familiar scarred hand. It is Atlas — now back from eight years in the military and other experiences. He looks…different. That’s because he’s played by a different actor, Brandon Sklenar (who suggests a baby-faced Russell Crowe), but also because he has aged into adulthood like fine wine. Aha, we think. So here’s the movie. Lily falls in love with the charismatic but questionable Ryle; sweet, chivalrous Atlas returns from her past. Who will she go with? The answer, at first, seems obvious (the blast from the past! à la “Casablanca”). But Ryle appears to be a born-again romantic. Maybe the movie is going to undercut our expectations?

It does, though not in the way we’re expecting. “It Ends with Us” is a story of how people repeat bad patterns in their lives, even (or maybe especially) when they don’t realize it. And the way this is conveyed is at once the essence of soap opera and also quite emotionally shrewd. For Lily really loves Ryle, and just like her we experience their relationship from the inside. When we see a glint of angry fire in Ryle, we want it to go away. Justin Baldoni’s performance is rivetingly layered — he makes Ryle a compartmentalized man, one who’s truly trying yet is unable to see himself.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, Aug. 5, 2024. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 130 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a Columbia Pictures, Wayfarer Studios, Saks Picture Company production. Producers: Alex Saks, Jamey Heath, Blake Lively, Christy Hall. Executive producers: Steve Sarowitz, Todd Black.
• Crew: Director: Justin Baldoni. Screenplay: Christy Hall. Camera: Barry Peterson. Editors: Oona Flaherty. Robb Sullivan. Music: Rob Simonsen, Duncan Blickenstaff.
• With: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate, Isabela Ferrer, Alex Neustaedter, Hasan Minhaj, Amy Morton.

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