That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)

Best movie of this year hands down!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

I just bought the DVD of this film and will never cease regretting it. This is the most awful Romy Schneider film I have seen, and I have seen most of her movies, including the ones filmed in Germany (Sissi, etc.).The 70's produced the weirdest films and I probably should have known better: if Klaus Kinski was in it, it cannot be good. But I love Romy Schneider and so I went for it.I will probably never see this movie again because I couldn't sit through this pretentious crap twice. I cannot understand how anyone could like this film. I didn't even like Romy in it, and that says a lot, given that she's one of my favorite actresses.If one reads the description of the movie plot, one is deceived as the story is not as simply told as described. I wish I could get my money back, but I bought the DVD from Amazon.de (Germany) - too much hassle to return it. I'll just throw in the trash instead and good riddance.

This film is a little more complex than the title suggests. Love is only one of the elements of the picture.In fact, I would say most of the movie is spent on producing "art" that you are not proud of. This theme is throughout the movie. You get the impression that it is being bolted into your nerves like a physical trauma bolts in disdain.We also deal with the end of youth and how we cope with it. The film is indeed extremely raw. The scenes are meant to be honest and to the point. We get very little sidestepping when it comes to the point of scenes. Perhaps the actors will discuss things in a roundabout way, but the theme slices through each scene like a scimitar.On the subject of love. This is very important to the movie as well. Even though there are virtually no signs of it til the very end, there is a longing for it. And that is what most good romances are about. Sydney Pollock once said something to the effect of, the interesting part of a Romance Film is the longing for the connection between the characters. You can have a couple of slow motion scenes of them waltzing through the park and feeding each other fruits, but that isn't what drives the story and the film. Perhaps that is why this film is so good.

Romy Schneider was absolutely right to consider this film as her major professional achievement. Thanks to Christopher Franck's remarkable adaptation from his own awarded novel LA NUIT AMERICAINE (not to be mistaken with Truffaut's well-known DAY FOR NIGHT) and to Georges Delerue's haunting soundtrack, Zulawski is here at his paramount, because his usual romantic excesses perfectly fit this time the subject. As for the cast, all the actors have never been so right in the part they've been chosen for : from Fabio Testi to Jacques Dutronc, from Klaus Kinsky to Claude Dauphin, not to mention Michel Robin. The scene in the bar, just after the theatrical premiere of Shakespeare's RICHARD III, when the whole crew reads the articles dedicated to their play, almost looks like a mirror of Zulawski himself, as most of his works have been misunderstood, if not definitely "killed" by the critics. if you happen to belong to the happy few who sincerely praise L'IMPORTANT C'EST D'AIMER, try to see some day the films that writer Christopher Franck personally directed from other novels of his about the same bohemian milieu, specially JOSEPHA, featuring Miou Miou & Claude Brasseur.

A very simple, and (thus) extremely powerful film. And, sadly, underrated. It's a mind-opening experience. It doesn't say anything new or different on the subject, its simplicity and consistence shows loud and clear that...love is nothing but pain, but it's the only thing worth fighting (living; feeling pain) for; the only thing that sets you free. When Schneider's personage finds an earlier repulsive photograph dying in his desolated apartment you get to feel that now she cannot not love him... A very sincere, believable, touching film resembling real life and real love. Every actor's work is praise-worth, and worth the film's title. They knew what each of them were talking about. And no wonder Kinski took part in this. (The mood of this film is somehow similar to Last Tango in Paris.) You can almost feel wounded along with these 'people' that are being thrashed by love.