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43
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92
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85
Savages, The
84
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
83
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
81
Juno
81
Bamako
78
Starting Out in the Evening
77
Nanking
74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
70
Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
P2
32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
24
One Missed Call
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Triumph of Love, The
Paramount Classics
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.

88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A gorgeous, witty, seductive movie.

80
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.

80
Variety
David Rooney
Light, thoroughly entertaining comedy;

80
Slate
David Edelstein
Sets you nearer than theater permits -- and further back than most movies dare. A magic vantage.

80
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.
75
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.
75
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?

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
The artifice may be ancient, but the thought and emotions -- and especially Sorvino -- are beautifully, refreshingly modern.

70
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
A lovely confection.

60
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.

60
Village Voice
Leslie Camhi
It's a giddy farce worthy of Lucy and Ethel, and Peploe plays up the buffoonery.

60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I was periodically put off by a certain self-conciousness in delivering this material.

60
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.

60
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
Indeed, a triumph of love: love of performance, love of joy, and, above all else, love of love itself.

60
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.
50
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.

50
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.

50
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.

50
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.

50
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.

42
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It's a gorgeous picture and features three substantial performances, but the material is chatty, forced and excessively arch.

40
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.

40
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.

38
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.

38
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
It's the kind of thing that Shakespeare might have written if he had undergone a frontal lobotomy.

25
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.

20
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.
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