A Promise (2014)

Director: Patrice Leconte Starring: Rebecca Hall, Alan Rickman Genres: Romantic Drama, Indie-Arthouse Cinema, Period Drama Origin: France Languages: English Running Time: 98 min

synopsis

A PROMISE is an exquisitely beautiful very quiet film based on Stefan Zweig's novel `Journey Into The Past', sensitively transformed into a screenplay by writer/director Patrice Laconte (Monsieur Hire, The Hairdresser's Husband, The Widow of Saint-Pierre, Intimate Strangers etc) and co-writer Jérôme Tonnerre (Intimate Strangers, Un Coeur en Hiver, My Father's Glory etc).

The story is enhanced in the film version so well because of the cast of fine actors and because of the atmospheric, very important musical score by Gabriel Yared.

Staying very close to Zweig's novel, the story is set in Germany just before WWI and is centered on a married woman who falls in love with her husband's protégé. Separated first by duties and then by the war, they pledge their devotion to one another.

Rickman, Hall and Madden deliver perfectly crafted performances, each revealing the difficulty of keeping a promise when personal needs are not being fulfilled