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France · 2017
Rated R · 1h 50m
Director Arnaud Desplechin
Starring Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel
Genre Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
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Ismael is a widowed film director working on his next movie, a film about a diplomat inspired by his estranged brother. But when Carlotta, a former lover thought to be dead after her disappearance 20 years ago, suddenly reappears, the new life he built for himself begins to crumble.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
The use of both dialogue and film language is sophisticated; sometimes Ismael’s Ghosts borders on overripe melodrama, while at other times it relies on genre tropes but then gives them an unexpected twist. [Cannes Version]
At its best, the movie is a freewheeling gambit, hurtling in multiple directions at once, and it’s thrilling to watch Desplechin try juggle them all. [Cannes Version]
The Film Stage by Giovanni Marchini Camia
Desplechin has frequently acknowledged his debt to psychoanalysis in general and Lacan specifically, but never had he dared plunge as deeply into the mysteries of the psyche as he does here. [Cannes Version]
Desplechin lashes storylines and filmmaking gimmickry in to the one ginormous stewpot with gusto, slams the lid down on it and promptly forgets to turn on the heat. [Cannes Version]
It isn't that it's hard going: it simply can't decide what it wants to be. [Cannes Version]
Screen International by Lisa Nesselson
Desplechin delivers with flying colours thanks to an excellent cast and a sometimes serious, sometimes funny story that never lets up or becomes predictable. [Cannes Version]
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
This is an unfinished doodle of a film, a madly self-indulgent jeu d’esprit without substance: a sketch, or jumble of sketches, a ragbag of half-cooked ideas for other movie projects, I suspect, that the director has attempt to salvage and jam together. [Cannes Version]
In its own weird way, Ismael’s Ghosts has something profound to say about the lingering pain of past relationships and the threat they still pose to the present, but it does so in such a needlessly complicated fashion, we can’t help but be overwhelmed. [Cannes Version]
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
Amalric transcends mere dishevelment here: in some scenes which flash back to the start of his relationship with Sylvia, the former Bond villain looks like a pile of leaves with a coat thrown on top. [Cannes Version]
Paste Magazine by Tim Grierson
Did Desplechin get seduced by the problems that plague filmmakers like himself? If so, he’s done a disservice to his own work, which needed a solution to its deficiencies—not an extended reverie that merely highlights them. [Cannes Version]
Surreal? Perverse? Wacky? After the arrival of a small white mouse, this film is all of the above.
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