80
Unapologetically aimed at the arthouse crowd, this is superior filmmaking. Superbly acted and well written, it stakes its claim in the pantheon of love-gone-wrong watches.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
I walked away from After Love feeling like I knew precious little about these characters. Lafosse gets so many critical things right about this decaying relationship that, at first, I did not wonder too much about the lack of specificity or detail about them as people. But later, it gnawed at me.
83
Even when accounting for its forced and uncertain finale, this is the most poignant and perceptive thing that LaFosse has ever made, and therefore also the most painful.
63
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film too often puts too much trust in dialogue, as Marie and Boris's predicament is sometimes perfectly conveyed by the actors' facial expressions and body language.
75
The Film Stage by Giovanni Marchini Camia
The meticulous script by Lafosse and his three co-writers prompts the viewer to parse each of their sentences for underlying meaning and backstory, maintaining a necessary level of ambiguity that constantly shifts the perception of who’s in the right and who’s to blame.
50
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
Not unlike an expensively tattooed panhandler, the couple elicit only a skeptical kind of sympathy.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Even if the air fizzles out a bit during the denouement, the film still accomplishes what it set out to do, with both Kahn and Bejo aptly shouldering all the narrative weight until the final scene.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
After Love is intelligent, compassionate, challenging film-making.
80
In a remarkable performance that at times suggests a desperate animal with nothing to lose, Kahn conveys the fact that Boris’ attachment to Marie hasn’t yet run its course.
80
Joachim Lafosse’s drama is an unsentimentally observed, credibly acted study of a marriage turned sour.