TELESCOPE Find international film
Browse All Films

Advanced Options

 

Boarding Gate

Ex-prostitute Sandra is forced to escape London when a steamy S&M encounter with a debt-ridden former lover ends in violence. Fleeing to Hong Kong in search of a fresh start, she becomes involved with an attractive young couple who promises to help her obtain papers and money. But nothing turns out as expected for Sandra, and she finds herself trapped in a sordid game of manipulation.
X

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?

Be the first to comment about this film.

WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

20

Variety by

Thrills and drama are left standing on the tarmac in Boarding Gate a limp, sleazy inanity by renowned French critic cum erratic helmer Olivier Assayas.
30

The New Yorker by David Denby

It’s time for this talented man (Assayas) to pull himself together. He may have something serious to say about the brutal impersonality of global capitalism, yet he’s caught somewhere between insight and exploitation.
88

Premiere by Glenn Kenny

This is very much a French intellectual cineaste's idea of a B thriller, and hence is as far from innocent in its genre as you can get. Which is not to say that Assayas deals in bad faith.
40

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

There's basically only one reason to see Olivier Assayas's self-consciously hypermodern, meta-sleazy, English-French-Chinese-language globo-thriller Boarding Gate, and her name is Asia Argento.
63

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Seriously flawed and not for every taste, the film was shot quickly and on the cheap, and is driven by Argento's slurred, scratchy voice and Bette Davis eyes.
80

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Even in Boarding Gate, a modestly scaled, self-consciously tawdry exercise in genre appropriation, Mr. Assayas manages to say more about what it is to be human -- to desire, to fear, to be alone -- than most filmmakers say in a lifetime.
67

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Boarding Gate's surfaces are often so staggeringly beautiful that its superficiality becomes forgivable, with the pleasant distractions of Assayas' multi-layered frames, Argento's sinewy allure, and snippets of Brian Eno ambience on the soundtrack. Why can't all movies this inane be this accomplished?

USERS WHO LIKED THIS FILM ALSO LIKED