The Children of the Century

Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel star in Diane Kurys' tempestuous love story between two of the 19th century's most headstrong Romanticists, writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset. Iconoclastic, proto-feminist writer Sand has usually been depicted onscreen in the context of her decade-long romance with Chopin, but Kurys concentrates upon her earlier more intense two year liaison with de Musset, whose fictionalized version of their affair was entitled "Confessions of a Child of the Century". Their relationship which takes place in the upper realms of French society in the early 1830s against a backdrop of great artistic tumult (Hugo, Delacroix, Berlioz, Balzac, Merimee et al.) and social upheaval became the celebrity coupling of their day. (official distributor synopsis)