Ben Affleck's original cut was reportedly 4 hours long, and it's pretty noticeable with missing character development (honestly, how many people knew Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively were supposed to be siblings?). What we have left is a movie close to something good, but no cigar.

It would be easy to simplify this as a female version of FIVE EASY PIECES, but it's so much more than that. The trio of actors are superb and this is further proof that although Francis Ford Coppola usually dealt with conflicted, confused male protagonists, he had great introspective and empathy for the females of his world. Not to be missed.

To call this movie anything less than real is an impossible endeavor.

This movie is so heartbreakingly elegant and elegantly heartbreaking it almost hurts. Julianne Moore has never been more dramatically alluring as a housewife watching her perfect life fall apart without an escape plan or way of expressing her pain.

It's as though Powell and Pressburger adapted the most enchanting story Ernest Hemingway never wrote. Magical, elegant film which weaves a fairy tale of romantic longing into a modern setting with the same expert storytelling (and stunning Jack Cardiff photography) as The Archers' famous film THE RED SHOES. In Spain, where the sun never sets and grand proclamations are stated in soft whispers, a mysterious sailor comes ashore and meets a chanteuse whose effect on men has led to disastrous consequences. Ava Gardner and James Mason are as perfectly beautiful as the Spanish ocean setting where the film was shot. Don't miss it.