I watched this on Chai Flicks (aka Netflix with Jewish themed movies and Israeli ones). Her religion and ethnicity really was irrelevant to the movie. Couldn't figure out if Phillipe was supposed to be but I believe he wasn't.

Phillipe to me is one of the most disgusting villains I have ever seen in any movie. I just expected him to be a snobbish, rich piece of you know what but he's even worse. The abuse to me was not needed and made the movie much more intense than it needed to be. To make things more complex, the daughter Chantel is nothing like the mother Rachel and is exactly like her father in looks and personality. How Rachel was able to live with a reminder of him is beyond me.

Brings me to Rachel. I don't think she was unlikable at all, rather naive. To Phillipe's defense all signs of him being a jerk were there from the beginning. He literally tells her he won't marry her throughout the movie and adds that if she were rich, it could be different (wtf?). Rachel knowingly allows him to have him to send his "seed" inside her. He sees her and Chantel every now and then for essentially a romp in the hay with Rachel mainly to get her off his back. He never financially helps out until he establishes a regular relationship with Chantel when she is a teenager. The sexual abuse imo came out of nowhere. They made him go from being a pig to being a pervert and a creep. Rachel had no idea what was going on until her daughter's much older "lover" tells her to not allow her to see Phillipe due to the ongoing abuse. Phillipe writes her a letter blaming Chantel for him not being able to see her anymore and that he thought she was different (classic narcissist to shame the victim) Chantel seems to have stopped seeing him until he is much older and when she is an adult. The only really unlikable thing about Rachel is that when she realizes that there has been abuse, she doesn't reach out to call the police as well as to warn Phillipe's wife who he has a child with.

Chantel spends years giving her mother the cold shoulder and on and off stops communicating with her. While a teenager, Rachel just thought Chantel was acting out as a teen and resented how her mother was working class and not as cultured as her father. Chantel clearly is messed up throughout the movie once her father reappears regularly in her life. The girl doesn't understand why her mother continues to sleep with him, gets abused by him, and at 14 or 15 has a relationship with a man who is in his 20s and a friend of Rachel's calling him a lover and not a boyfriend. As an adult she appears to be in a loveless relationship and has a child contemplating leaving him.

It's a depressing movie from start to finish.

I did not seek out this film.

Watched it one Sunday afternoon on BBC iPlayer.

I was feeling unwell and thought it looked gentle enough. There was no write up, so did not know what to expect.

It was a fine, intelligent film; Rachel was a wonderful character, I liked and understood her. It is this factor that sustains the film throughout. The two hours or so passed quickly; one becomes heavily invested in the central character.

One is left with no doubt about Phillippe from the start, he is not ordinary and totally narcissistic. Therein lies the reason for, what sometimes seems like, his unfathomable hold over Rachel. This is not about class differences or anything as mundane as that keeping lovers apart, this is about a true narcissist's manipulation of a trusting and loving girl / woman.

When adult Chantel, Rachel and Philippe's daughter, confronts Rachel at the end, Rachel's answer is believable; she simply did not conceive that the problems in their mother and daughter relationship, during Chantel's teenage years, was anything other than that she, Rachel, was simply not good enough.

I am trying not to give anything away, just watch the film and see it play out. Just remember that it is Rachel's life you are watching unfolding.

Sometimes things are not as we think. This movie is an example of that. What starts with a very ordinary story develops into an adventure of drama. We have seen the story, the beginning of the film many, many times before; boy meets girl, they fall in love, but can not marry due to class differences. But this issue is only used as a starting point in this gripping, well-played and engaging film. The film depicts people, main characters in an era, and masterfully manages to follow developments. For my own part, it was also demanding to watch, first and foremost to understand why Rachel played by Virginie Efira makes the choices she makes in the film. This is how good film should be like. Challenge us and give us insight into choices others choose to make. I now understand that I have to check out the other films director Catherine Corsini has made. At least she has succeeded greatly in this wonderful film.