Tony historical romance centered around the affair of the twenty-three-year-old Alfred de Musset and the six-years-older George Sand, "poetry and prose," perhaps not a perfect match but an ignitable one. Not half, not a quarter, not an eighth the fun of the cooler-headed and farther-distanced Impromptu, navigating the same social circle, plus Chopin. (Mandy Patinkin and Judy Davis were Musset and Sand in that one.) The approach here is so straight, so square, as to be severely wanting in interpretation and personality, apart, anyway, from the standard feminist point of view (Diane Kurys, director) from which the woman will appear deep, ardent, authentic, and completely committed while the man will seem a fickle, self-indulgent, self-destructive poseur. As far as that goes, you wonder why Sand would have put up with him. Asking Juliette Binoche to play one of the luminaries of the Romantic Movement only incites her to turn up her already high-flame histrionics. Asbestos is the recommended attire for all but the most devoted moth. Benoit Magimel comes across as closer to caricature, but that seems to be the point. The opening credits sequence of setting and printing a block of type by letterpress has more magic in it than has all of the emotional combustion. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd