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France · 2016
1h 38m
Director Alain Guiraudie
Starring Damien Bonnard, India Hair, Raphaël Thierry, Christian Bouillette
Genre Drama
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Leo is a filmmaker seeking inspiration. During a trip to the south of France, he begins a relationship with Marie, a free-spirited shepherdess. Nine months later, she gives birth to their child — and abandons them in a bout of postpartum depression. This drama follows Leo as he tries to raise the child alone.
Screen International by Allan Hunter
Exploring a bewildering range of issues from ideas of masculinity to assisted suicide and the fraying of societal ties, Staying Vertical is wildly eccentric, darkly comic and filled with you-don’t-see-that-often moments which are liable to render it an acquired taste.
Call it scenery in search of a film. Call it a film in search of a purpose. Call me when Guiraudie releases his next one, because, damn, the guy’s got talent.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Staying Vertical slowly morphs into something closer to a dark — and darkly funny — myth or fairytale, though this transformation isn’t entirely smooth.
The film never quite flies off the rails so much as it careens from side to side on the same beguiling path, with the most remarkable outcome being that the enigmatic pieces fit together.
The Film Stage by Giovanni Marchini Camia
Apart from a middle stretch during which the narrative loses momentum and Staying Vertical feels temporarily aimless – something that Guiraudie soon rectifies by amping up the weirdness – the film is as engaging and consistently uproarious as it is perplexing.
It’s less a convincing, involving narrative than an episodic picaresque that rambles loose-jointedly from absurdist encounter to vaguely fable-like incident.
Guiraudie's humour is self-referential and at times hilarious. His tendency to shock might seem adolescent but he's also careful to identify taboos that perhaps shouldn't be taboos at all.
The technical bravura that Guiraudie summoned in “Stranger” — the subtle manipulation of light, weather, shot language, and temporal cunning — now falls by the wayside in a story that lurches from episode to disconnected episode.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
An incoherent, inconsequential picture which sometimes looks worryingly as if it is being made up as it goes along.
Staying Vertical is a script by a hot talent never quite getting round to being fully written, and instead disappearing down a series of suggestive dead ends.
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