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France, Belgium · 2015
1h 31m
Director Guillaume Nicloux
Starring Gérard Depardieu, Isabelle Huppert, Dan Warner, Dionne Houle
Genre Drama
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Gérard and Isabelle, a French couple separated for decades, meet up at a desert motel in California. Each has received a letter from their son Michaël, who killed himself in San Francisco six months earlier, asking them to visit certain spots in Death Valley on certain days, when he will reappear to them.
Screen International by Allan Hunter
The affectionate rapport between the actors and their characters is evident in every scene and manages to transport the wary viewer through an odd but not unappealing mixture of mystical road movie and family psychodrama.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film enables us to feel the emotional weight of a posthumous letter precisely because we can only imagine its contents.
There are gentle rewards to be gained from the initially brittle, gradually tender rapport between two actors of contrasting greatness.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch
A flawed but affecting two-hander that intrigues and frustrates in nearly equal measure.
Los Angeles Times by Katie Walsh
It's illuminating to see Huppert and Depardieu in a different mode, and Huppert brings a delicate physical and emotional fragility to her role. These two are fantastic, and they're fantastic together.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
This movie is finally only about Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, and that’s enough.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Isabelle and Gérard's regrets and laments about their parenting skills betray no bone-deep rue or shame but are delivered with all the conviction of two luminaries merely running their lines.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
Valley Of Love is at its best when it wanders away from its ostensible premise and just lets two old pros connect, riffing lightly on our knowledge of their real-life histories.
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
A film as mercurial as this can be an impressive thing, but the back half is so filled with half-baked metaphysics, pseudo-Lynchian maybe-dreams, and a sour, cheap conclusion that feels nihilistically cruel to at least one of its characters, that even the pleasures of watching the actors on screen start to fade away.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
This movie doesn’t really follow through with its own ideas, either in the natural realm of the ageing couple’s relationship or the supernatural arena of an eerily possible apparition.
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