I enjoyed most of this film, which was much more of a straight drama than the romantic comedy I was expecting, though it certainly had elements of the former. Unfortunately, most of the elements I didn't like came into play near the end, somewhat spoiling what had come before.
The film's set-up is great. It tells the seemingly simple story of Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) a high school English teacher who is at risk of being fired due to his increasingly erratic public behavior and his stalled publishing career. When the new art teacher, Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche) arrives at the school, she and Marcus quickly enter into a debate as to whose artistic medium of choice is more powerful (hence the title of the film). A lot of time is spent establishing the two main characters, and Owen and Binoche deliver fantastic, complex performances. Their chemistry for much of the film, though of the friendly yet antagonistic sort, does not even have all that much of a romantic undercurrent. When they do finally fall into bed together, it feels more like an earned moment rather than an inevitable event the film was inexorably leading the viewer towards. Investing so much time in making the characters feel real paid off handsomely. It was a treat to learn about the lives and struggles of each complicated character, then seeing how they were challenged by and reacted to each other. I would have been fine with it if the film had ended when they finally got together. Unfortunately, it didn't.
The last half hour or so did not work nearly as well as the film that preceded it. Be warned: I'll have to reveal some slight spoilers in order to discuss the issues I had. Almost immediately after the two leads finally sleep together, Marcus gets drunk and ruins everything, then spends the rest of the film trying to make things right and achieve, if not a reconciliation, at least an understanding between himself and Delsanto. I won't claim that this development was not adequately set up--there were frequent references to and even demonstrations of Marcus's problems with alcohol. Still, for a film that had told such a real story and avoided most romantic comedy clichés, this felt to me like incredibly lazy, formulaic writing. We see that story all the time: everything is going great until the guy makes some terrible mistake, causing the girl to never want to speak to him again. In typical romantic comedies it's an expected twist that we accept as a part of the package. In this film it felt jarring and, frankly, I expected better. I also wasn't crazy about alcoholism being the catalyst for Marcus's breakdown. The alcoholic writer? Yeah, that's original.
I was really let down by the film's ending, but I still think it is worth seeing for the two great leading performances. If the film had ended a bit earlier or differently, it would have been great. As is, it's only "pretty good".
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