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Oh Mercy(Roubaix, une lumière)

A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered.
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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

67

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

The only real gravitas comes from the reliably excellent Zem, here doing minor wonders with the clichéd role of the good-hearted, unwaveringly calm human lie detector.
50

The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij

There's little in terms of the tension associated with police thrillers, but it's also not a socio-realist drama or a character study, instead echoing parts of these genres at different times so there's a constant sense of deja vu and reminders of other, better films without the material ever really coming into its own.
42

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Forestier and Seydoux are both fantastically desperate as dead end citizens who met each other at a very dangerous time in their lives, but Desplechin fails to make full use of his actors; instead of allowing them to shade in their characters, he pummels the audience into an ambiguous state of forced sympathy.
50

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Although Desplechin claims his main interest is to get inside the two women’s characters, pushing away moral absolutes about guilt and innocence (yes, “Crime and Punishment” is a key influence), the couple come off as the least interesting people on screen.
70

Screen Daily by Lee Marshall

Rambling but strangely compelling, Oh Mercy!’s documentary bedrock gives the investigation at the heart of the film a real authenticity. From around its midpoint, this uneven film becomes a riveting, compassionate interrogation drama.
40

CineVue by Martyn Conterio

Some actors can play anything, but asking super-posh and glamourous Seydoux to play dirt poor is an ask too far.
40

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is a drama that attempts to behave like a tough police procedural in a quasi-Melville vein, but also like a musing prose-poem about the vanity of human wishes.

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