Kristin Scott Thomas doffs her native language, a recent tendency toward shrewishness, and a couple of sundresses to play an elegant South-of-France housewife hot for an ex-con builder (Sergi López). Against pointedly scorching Spanish vistas, Thomas's Suzanne and López's Ivan grind the afternoons away. When her doctor husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal), questions her whereabouts, Suzanne offers, "I had to go to the deli." Lying, however, doesn't come easy, and soon Suzanne leaves her two teens, the domineering Samuel, and a posh home-improvement project for a simple, lusty life with Ivan. Yet by the time the lovers land on a melon farm, the familiar saga of sexual awakening has lathered up considerably, even ludicrously, and the intrigue drains faster than Suzanne's savings. Thomas, though, remains a mesmerizing mix of carnality and class, and through richer and poorer, she keeps director/co-writer Catherine Corsini's bourgeois fantasy from overheating.
