I had been looking forward to seeing this film for about a month after I saw an interview with Ben Kingsley talking about it.<br /><br />I was very disappointed. I found it slow, pretentious and really flat. I thought the two main characters were vain, shallow and unlikeable.<br /><br />Penelope Cruz's performance was far better than Ben Kingsley's but was nowhere near her usual standards, such as Volver. She has much greater ability than was displayed here.<br /><br />The background music was laboured and intrusive. All in all I found it horridly contrived and I had to keep looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to suffer it before it ended.