Amanda

Amanda is unarguably pleasing to the eye, with a visual menu ranging across many pleasant albeit clichéd Parisian locations, with reasonable performances from the cast of stereotypical French characters. This film works well as a kind of emollient to the central tragedy and steers well clear of any sharp edges that a more psychoanalytical or political investigation would have turned up in this essentially anodyne fairy tale about loss and recovery. At times the syrupy score seemed too much, where silence would have served better, but all the stops have been pulled out to create something deliberately optimistic. However, in doing so it plays loudly over a lot of situational complexity that would have been worth exploring, so ultimately leaving this viewer at least feeling a bit mollicudled. I hesitate to be too critical, but there is a certain amount of paint-by-numbers to the plot & dramatic scenarios and a thinness and shallowness to the overall narrative. Still, there's a lot to like in the unspoken interactions between David and Amanda, David and his injured friends for instance which really, in spite of the film as a whole do feel profoundly humane and genuine. Perhaps the key to enjoying the film is to stay with the epynominous weather-vane character Amanda, and her naive perspective on events, as besides that, there's not much grown-up reality here anyway to trouble you.