Quote Originally Posted by rockzmom
So Olya, let me ask you this (and I ask with sincerity) ... story line aside... what about the rest of the movie? The things that it won Oscars for, did you find those at all to help the film have any redeeming value or was the storyline so upsetting for you that it would not matter how good everything else was, it was too distracting for you?

The reason I ask, I know that there are times when even one piece of dialogue (maybe it is not right for the character or would not have been said at the time the story took place), one wrong continuity, or some other little distraction... can ruin an otherwise fantastic film for people. So if this is the case, if the story line itself (or the main character) was such a distraction for you, even with the rest of the film being the cream of the crop, 50 awards, is it a film you would never recommend on any level?

Just wondering, 'cus ya know, I am the curious type when it comes to this stuff.
To be honest, I don't remember the film very well, and I don't remember the whole plot in details, even. But I remember very well all my impressions about this film. I can tell you that I didn't like the acting AT ALL (I don't remember supporting roles, though). The story line told us that the man and the woman loved... no, LOVED each other. I didn't see that at all. I only saw vain attempts to imitate love. All those "love" things in the film were boring to me.
I must add, however, that we Russian viewers are used to a very high level of acting we saw in our films (I think many Russians even don't realize that). So an acting which won Oscar could look just very pale and even just bad from Russian dainty point of view. To be quite honest, I see really good acting (in my opinion) in foreign films very rarely. At best, acting in foreign films is just "okay" to me.
P.S. If you are interested, the only foreing actor who convinced me that he can play not worse, and even better than some Russian actors, was Alan Rickman.