Review of The Immigrant (2013) by Viet Phuong N — 24 Apr 2014

A film that is wayyy to slow to be enjoyed. The pace, the character depiction and development, the struggling love, or the fight for belief, all echos Gray's highly-praised Two Lovers (which I did not really like either for its unbearable slowness) but the story here is much weaker (Two Lovers' adaptation of "White Night" is obviously an advantage) and no matter how Gray tried to make his characters look deep, they were in fact shallowly described to the point that the audience could hardly feel their pains, their struggle for hope, their passions, and most importantly, their distinctive personalities and characters.

That is the reason why despite the obvious excellence of Phoenix and Cotillard, their love-hate relationship is very difficult to be appreciated and to be felt by the audience. The sudden appearance and disappearance of Jeremy Renner's character did not help to improve the plot either, a character so blurred into the film's storyline that the audience could not get anything, any meaning at all, out of him.

The superb Joaquin Phoenix and the gorgeous Marion Cotillard deserve a much better environment to show off their talent, not this kind of nostalgic, old-style romantic tragedy by Gray.