Juliette Binoche Movie:

				Salesrank: 289716
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
The fascination of watching Damage is similar to the fascination of watching a car crash in progress--you know something unpleasant is going to happen, but your attention is riveted to the scene of destruction. In the case of this acclaimed drama, adapted by playwright David Hare from the novel by Josephine Hart, the destruction results from a collision of sexual attraction between a British governmental official (Jeremy Irons) and his son's fiancée (Juliette Binoche). Blind to the damage they'll cause to others and themselves, they begin an obsessive affair based purely on impulsive attraction and the hidden emotions that feed into their immediate physical desires. As you could expect, this leads to emotional fallout for everyone concerned, lending multiple interpretations to the film's title and allowing Miranda Richardson (as Irons's wife) to give a brilliant performance drawn from raw anger and betrayal. Under the direction of Louis Malle, this forceful drama never resorts to sordid detail or gratuitous titillation. Rather, Malle and his esteemed cast have explored the ways in which the power of sexuality supercedes the rationality of logic, when mutual attraction is stronger than one's ability to resist temptation. Damage makes it clear that such an indulgence will always come at considerable cost. The DVD of this fine film includes a behind-the-scenes featurette and the original theatrical trailer. --Jeff Shannon

Damage [Region 2] Reviews:
Lovely Binoche !
2009-12-15 - One of my favourite film with Binoche...a great movie, very well acted. Jeremy Irons at his best !
I must admit that Juliette Binoche is my favourite french actress !

DAMAGE, a story of lust, love and tragedy.
2009-12-01 - DAMAGE, Perhaps the most provocative movie in my collection, a story of passion and desire, love and demise with a very tragic ending...SIX Stars!!!

Good, prompt service
2009-11-30 - I received this DVD promptly, in excellent condition -- and at a considerably lower price than it had previously been listed for. Who could ask for more?

Crash Into Me
2009-11-21 - Louis Malle's "Damage" is not the movie that launched Jeremy Iron's career as our reigning upper-crust sex pervert. That would be David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" shot 5 years before this film. Mr. Irons would follow this performance with turns in "M. Butterfly" and "Lolita", cementing his reputation as the actor most willing to go to the dark side of sexual perversion, a journey his characters never return from in one piece, if they survive at all. When I read Josephine Hart's 1991 novel of the same name, I wondered idly who could possibly play the leads and seeing Irons here, his casting is a no-brainer. There are very few actors who can pull off the tricky combination of aristocratic breeding and sexual depravity, but this is Irons' stock-in-trade.

When we first meet Dr. Stephen Fleming, he is a respected, high-ranking member of Parliament, with a lovely home complete with servants and an equally handsome family. Apart from feeling inferior to his father-in-law, who is the real source of the family affluence, Stephen's life seems about perfect in every conceivable way, his political star destined to rise even higher. But Stephen's a restless man; despite all his successes, he's wrestling with a mid-life crisis, at loose ends in a career that his ambitious wife wanted for him more than he wanted it himself. He is ripe for a Perfect Storm.

Enter the storm in the form of Anna, the dark and mysterious beauty who introduces herself to Stephen at a cocktail party. The two exchange an immediate frisson of carnal recognition, and Stephen is lost. The supremely inconvenient fact that Anna is dating and soon to be engaged to Stephen's son do not stop this pair from embarking on a torrid, wildly inappropriate, ultimately tragic sexual affair. Anna is damaged, she tells her new lover, and therefore dangerous. The 'damage' stems from the adolescent loss of her brother, in whose death Anna was either directly or indirectly complicit--that is for the audience to judge. Anna is not engaging in false advertising here, but her besotted lover does not heed what she says and stay away from her, to the detriment of everyone his life touches.

As Anna, Juliette Binoche has the more difficult, more unsympathetic role. Anna is an enigma, and enigmas are more easily explained on the page than onscreen, where a reader can get into a character's head. Binoche's Anna does a lot of unsettling stone-faced staring meant to be mesmerising, I guess, but despite her austere beauty which captures Hart's physical descripton of Anna closely enough, something vital has been lost in translation. Binoche's Anna lacks the force of any sort of vitality or spirit; for Malle it is enough that she just look beautiful and tortured. Binoche is very attractive indeed, but in the end, her face alone (and her propensity for wearing black stockings) is not sufficient explanation for all that transpires here. Is Anna a completely amoral self-serving Jezebel out to dismantle a happy family and betray all sorts of trust just because she can, being so irresistible, or does the greater share of blame fall on the men who singlemindedly (or using a lesser head) pursue the forbidden fruit she seems to offer? Whichever you believe, the book offers a more substantial portrait of a complicated woman than the one Binoche offers here.

This is essentially a two-actor showcase, and just about every inch of both actors is on display, particularly Irons. Some of the love scenes are unintentially hilarious; if I'm not wrong, Binoche and Irons may have actually invented several new lovemaking positions, none of them elegant to watch. Miranda Richardson as the wronged wife and Rupert Graves as the wronged son/fiance bring memorable poignancy as the collateral damage in this doomed affair. Even as this movie sickens, you will be unable to look away until the inevitable derailment.

The perfect title
2009-07-26 - He's damaged, she's damaged, everyone around them is damaged and after Irons and Binoche give in to their sick attraction, the damage becomes fatal. Irons is expert at playing tortured, twisted, dissatisfied characters and he didn't let us down in this movie. Binoche is beyond bad. Her character apparently wants to relive her sick past and what better way to do it than to seek out her fiance's father and involve him? However, everything about Binoche irritated me, from her inexpressive face to her masculine appearance and piano legs dressed in black hose to the sex scenes where she flops around like a rag doll. I realize that the sex between them wasn't really a connection at all but an attempt to both self punish and feel but Irons could've used a blow up doll and achieved the same result. I gave this movie 5 stars solely on Irons' performance. His eyes emote pages of dialogue that Miranda Richardson struggles to deliver. She has perfected the tight throat voice and I was always aware that it was she that I was watching and not the character of Irons' wife. If you're looking for passion between any of the characters, then avoid this movie. If you can imagine driving through or flying over a scene where a natural disaster has just occurred, then you'll understand why this movie is appropriately titled.