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25 out of 26 people found the following review useful: Green Light for Viewing (DVD), 20 December 2005 Author: XavissimuS from PariS
A movie isn't never as much great as it can speak personally. This movie does it for me and I'm lucky. This review is thus very subjective but it comes from the heart....First, it is a rare movie in which I feel my favorite town, New York as my neighborhood. The town really appears as an endless collection of big cubic buildings, but under the soft menace of the green invasion (trees, garden,...). All the roof scenes are memorable...Then, McDowell plays an almost introvert woman in contrast to the French extraversion of Depardieu. Sure, being French, I support our national icon, who is particularly in his turf here, but I was more over captivated by the development of the Bronte character and her feelings. From her initial motivation, then indifference to exasperation and finally complicity & deep devotion, it was a remarkable evolution to behold and understand.Finally, there's also a lot of subtext & subtlety here and it's great for the brain: I mean some things talks to our unconscious and the connection isn't immediate. For example, think how Africa is the main background: the emigration subject, the Afrika bar, the drums, the safari life ... There's also the sweet translation from Green Card to Green House, and the role of ecology... Like I already said, the green tries to grow in every free space left from the rock buildings, which is a poetic metaphor for the emigration...So, a great romantic story in a wonderful setting & which leaves many doors to open...
17 out of 18 people found the following review useful: Different, 3 August 2001 Author: Mort-31 from Vienna, Austria
Usually, romantic comedies are all the same, concerning their tone and their dialogue. „Green Card` by the great director Peter Weir („Truman Show`, „Witness`!), is a little different, which alone makes it sympathetic.The film evokes interest right at the beginning because if people don't know exactly what it is all about, they might not get immediately what's happening. Brontë is already married to Georges the French composer. Other directors or screenwriters would have shown their wedding in detail, peppered with gags. But Weir sees that this is not necessary, it would only follow the convention.Later we have unexpected plot twists and changes in the characters that are not always convincing but give the film an interesting, not too light base tone. And actually, Peter Weir is a too enthusiastic director to make a visually rather undemanding romance film. So he introduces some wonderful visual ideas like the scene where Georges is standing in front of Brontë's door, covered with a blanket, calling her name, while the camera shoots him from inside, through the „watcher`. I'm not particularly fond of Andie MacDowell because she always seems even more nervous than my English teacher, always presenting herself with a pained smile. In „Green Card` of course, the fact that she is not at all likeable (to me at least) fits perfectly, and one little wonder of the movie is that Gérard Depardieu can convincingly play that he is falling in love with her.A comedy surprise.
14 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Offbeat and uplifting, 13 June 2003 Author: Amy Adler from Toledo, Ohio
For those looking for an offbeat, uplifting romantic comedy, this one fits the bill. Andie McDowell plays Bronte; she is a young city gardener who has her eye on a beautiful apartment with a greenhouse. The problem is she must be married in order to apply for it. Enter Gerard Depardieu. He plays an immigrant Frenchman looking to marry an American so he will have permanent residency status in the United States. A mutual friend arranges a paper marriage between the two. Bronte gets her apartment; Depardieu has what he wants, also. Unfortunately, the INS suspects it is a bogus marriage and the two have to "temporarily" move in together in order to prove their marriage is real. From the start, Bronte and her immigrant husband dislike each other. Yet, strange things can happen. This is a sweet story with plenty of laughs sprinkled throughout. McDowell looks stunning and Depardieu, despite carrying a lot of extra weight, charms and delights. Nice little touches, such as the scenes where the couple take fake photographs of their honeymoon, are prevalent. Take a chance on Green Card; it's guaranteed to give the viewer permanent smiling status.
10 out of 12 people found the following review useful: Worth Watching, 19 July 2001 Author: aliceburn
Green Card is a good movie. Worth watching. The first time I saw it I wasn't impressed, but then watching it again I found it realistic and refreshingly charming, in that "simple/against the tide" sort of way that is so Peter Weir. He's also done The Witness, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show; and Green Card, most certainly, is another of his films about people who don't quite fit in their environment or in the world of their aspirations but are drawn into finding life where probably they were not looking for. The scene about finding the bathroom is both hilarious and very suspenseful. It's funny how in a house, or even in a small apartment, we're never quite sure where the bathroom is. Our first instinct is to ask, even though it probably wouldn't be a difficult move to find that on our own. Now imagine having to deal with that bathroom situation (something you only care about when you need it) pretending that the place where you're in is your house. It's almost like in those nightmares where there are so many doors but which one is the one that will take you to that next level you so much need but have not the slightest idea of what it might really be? I guess the metaphor here is that you keep on opening a chain of wrong doors until you find the right one for you. It's frustrating, but the door was always there, always, with the exception that you never noticed it. Just like in everyday life, love and spirituality might flash into your face as banal sight at first, but they're made of hopes and fears that are always bigger than us, unexplainable, maybe fate. We don't have control of it (the Greeks knew it), we're still the same but again we're not. And here we are, groping, surviving. How do you relate to people and to your present circumstances -- whatever they might be --that is what Green Card is about.
11 out of 14 people found the following review useful: the beautiful garden and the magnificence of Bronte, 31 August 2004 Author: chuck winchester from north and south carolina
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
The film was a sensual master piece with a ending that leaves you spell bound and mystified as to the fact when will they meet again and embrace the reality of the love that transformed from a relationship that was never to be. I especially loved the garden it was so magnificent and to even imagine that such beauty could exist in a city of concrete and pavement. Bronte has such passion for this magnificent garden that she is willing to forgo all obstacles in such blindness that she does not even see the beauty with in the beast of her new husband until it is too late to really let him know how much she cares for him. in the end you can feel the pain that both lovers have as they no longer have the ability to be together in the garden of eden as with Adam and eve where Adam and eve were cast out of the garden Bronte was left with the garden all alone.
7 out of 8 people found the following review useful: DVD please?, 25 November 2002 Author: the_worlok from NJ, USA
This movie is strangely addictive. Gérard Depardieu displays a very noble and charming character who is at the same time a simple and gruff man. He doesn't do the pretentiousness that is so common today. He is unsophisticated yet not uncomplicated. Andie MacDowell plays her part wonderfully. You just want to smack her silly at times, which proves that McDowell is a great actress. She is also one of Hollywood's "Classic" beauties. She is a pleasure to watch not only for her first rate acting but also because she is such a handsome woman.My wife hooked me on this movie. I am a typical American man, who is usuually into action and SciFi movies. I usually run screaming from romantic movies. The fact that this is a Romantic COMEDY made it fun to watch. Depardieu plays the large "oafish" commoner to a "T". He is a very funny man indeed, as well as a first rate actor in his own right. He is not in enough movies, IMNSHO.I wish the studio that owns this would release it on DVD in the US.
5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Green Card: A film whose romantic moments outweigh its dramatic scenes, 22 January 2009 Author: Lalit Rao (cpowerccc@yahoo.com) from Paris, France
It is no so often that good films like "Green Card" are made.But when they are made,it is not so easy for dedicated viewers to remove such cinematographic gems from their minds as they captivate us to such an extent that we tend to think of them on all occasions."Green Card" is not only a good film but also a film with serious purpose.It tackles albeit in a non political manner, the need to obtain a green card in order to make a life better.By making,"Green Card" Australian director Peter Weir has created a film which highlights the importance of good things of life such as friends,love and music.Much of this film's strength comes in the form of fine performances by lead actors Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell.They look like a real life couple madly in love with each other.As Gerard Depardieu is at the top of his acting abilities it can be said that no one would mind his accented English.A film with an obvious title "Green Card" might be perceived as a movie with a lot of drama but the cinematographic genius of Peter Weir is revealed in the form of his decision to relegate drama to back seat.This is the reason why he has shown credulous romance to make us all believe in the power of love in our lives.
8 out of 11 people found the following review useful: A great date movie, 19 January 2004 Author: kimmy7771 from San Jose, CA
This is a great date movie. I love it how they fall in love, despite they're difference. I also love it how she loves him for him, and not this built up romantic image that many American woman have about French men. (This is quite evident throughout the movie) Obviously the movie is just like the tag line, but how they get their, is a wonderful story within itself. I recommend this for anyone who wants to see a great date movie, and who doesn't mind a movie set in the 80s.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Love for sale, 6 October 2000 Author: goya-4 from pa usa
Gerard Depardieu and Andie McDowell meet and for mutually beneficial reasons end up getting married..he so he can stay in the country and she so she can get the rent controlled Manhatten apartment..alas they must convince the INS that their marriage is true so they get to know each other, grudgingly of course at first..until love intervenes. A charming movie that features a good matchup with McDowell and Depardieu..good date film too. on a scale of one to ten..7
8 out of 13 people found the following review useful: Decent though rarely hilarious romcom, 20 February 2001 Author: (thehumanduvet@hotmail.com) from uk
A romantic comedy-drama really, with far fewer laughs and much more sentiment than typical for the genre, though seemingly based on the favourite romcom premise that two people thrown into a position of intimacy for an extended period will inevitably fall into a touching and romantic love no matter how incompatible they at first appear. Depardieu comes across very well, though really doesn't need to try very hard to pull off the fairly stereotypical 'big french feller' he plays here, and MacDowell is her usual droney-voiced, moody-faced self, there to look pretty but prim rather than inspire any great feeling. The story ambles along nicely, taking in most of the standard licks of the genre ? impressing the friends, the family, high jinks with the neighbours, bad behaviour and heroism, shouting and laughing together to illustrate how love can emerge from conflict. Not hugely funny or romantic, but very nice to see that a romantic leading man could still smoke, drink and eat lots of butter in health-obsessed Hollywood back in 1990.
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