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Triumph of Love, The
Paramount Classics


4.8

based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 6 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some nudity and sensuality

Starring Mira Sorvino, Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw, Jay Rodan, Ignazio Oliva, Rachael Stirling, and Luis Molteni

In a sun-drenched Italian villa where the madness of love has long been forbidden, one woman's passion is about to upend reason, bend genders and take every heart in the house prisoner. (Paramount Classics)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Clare Peploe Marilyn Goldin Bernardo Bertolucci Marivaux (play)
DIRECTED BY:	Clare Peploe
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 29, 2002 Video: October 29, 2002 Theatrical: April 17, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	111 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Italy / UK

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Supple, eloquent and enchanting.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

A gorgeous, witty, seductive movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

This intelligent, breezy romantic comedy sings a love song to theater. Plus, there's a hunky lug and Mira Sorvino in drag.

Variety David Rooney

Light, thoroughly entertaining comedy;

Slate David Edelstein

Sets you nearer than theater permits -- and further back than most movies dare. A magic vantage.

New Times (L.A.) Jean Oppenheimer

The film is worth seeing for Sorvino alone. The actress hasn't been this good since Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite," a role that couldn't be more dissimilar.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The always reliable Kingsley and Shaw are hilarious, and if the movie isn't quite a triumph, it's still far better than the junk food currently cluttering movie screens.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The story, based on an 18th century French play by Pierre Marivaux, is the sort of thing that inspired operas and Shakespeare comedies: It's all premise, no plausibility, and so what?

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The artifice may be ancient, but the thought and emotions -- and especially Sorvino -- are beautifully, refreshingly modern.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

A lovely confection.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

What we're watching, however charming, is a fancifully costumed theater piece that cuts off the oxygen needed to make a play breathe onscreen.

Village Voice Leslie Camhi

It's a giddy farce worthy of Lucy and Ethel, and Peploe plays up the buffoonery.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Playful as it is, Clare Peploe's adaptation of Pierre Marivaux's romantic comedy coughs and sputters on its own postmodern conceit.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Indeed, a triumph of love: love of performance, love of joy, and, above all else, love of love itself.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Farce is a genre best served with building momentum and crack timing. This lazily paced piece seems more concerned with winking at the audience and putting quotations around the performances than anything so crass as playing this farce for laughs.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Triumph of Love, Marivaux's 270-year-old romantic comedy, is a beguiling trifle, a gauzy, teasing inquiry into the fungibility of emotions.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

However charming Kingsley and Shaw are as the lovestruck pawns and Sorvino as the advancing queen, the premise is less playful than played-out.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Shaw and Kingsley both create crisp, comic performances, but Sorvino remains a problem throughout. Her physical transformation falls short of the "Boys Don't Cry" standard, to put it mildly.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a gorgeous picture and features three substantial performances, but the material is chatty, forced and excessively arch.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

The result is an exquisite yawn that provokes consideration of how accomplished Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw and Mira Sorvino and others are as actors -- but how in this instance the characters they play so intensely never come alive.

TV Guide Stephen Miller

It's all surprisingly predictable. As for Sorvino, she can wear the clothes, but they don't necessarily make the man.

Boston Globe Beth Pinsker

Sorvino can't pass for a man, but that's beyond the point in this rarefied situation. She's beautiful and she can usually act, but here the only convincing thing she projects is fatigue from running around the garden all day.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's the kind of thing that Shakespeare might have written if he had undergone a frontal lobotomy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A triumph of misguided moviemaking, starting with a grotesquely miscast Mira Sorvino, who arguably gives the worst performance ever by an Oscar winner.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

All icing, with a few crumbs devoted to the notion that it is futile to resist the heart's desires.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Brad A. gave it a2:
Overacted stage play that should never have been put on film. Insulting at best!

Michael G. gave it a 5:
Well, Bertolucci plus Kingsley and Sorvino should've created a wonder, but movie editing is clumsy and Sorvino is not that believable. !8th century plays usually boring in 21st century unless they have some modern interpretation and fantastic performance of actors. That did not occur this time...

Rudolf V. gave it an 8:
A pure unmuddled storyline from which the intrigues do not detract. It is a classic comedy of errors played with with tongue in the cheek abandon (which some reviewers did not quite catch). I liked the glimpses of the audience in the garden.

Kevin B. gave it a 0:
Seriously the most painful moviegoing experience of my life. Absolutely worthless in any regard.

Gary H. gave it a 6:
Ben Kingsley is wonderful, as always!

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Triumph of Love, The Paramount Classics

Triumph of Love, The
Paramount Classics