90
Bonello replies to the news with a magnetic and purely cinematic gesture.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
20
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Without a real-world correlative for the actions it depicts, Bertrand Bonello’s new film would merely be tedious and pretentious rather than repellent.
100
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
Bertrand Bonello constructs a clear-eyed sense of how technology keeps getting closer and closer to replacing human consciousness.
67
It’s fine that Bonello would rather raise unsettling questions than provide unhelpful answers, but his inquiry often feels every bit as confused as his characters. Nocturama is enthralling until the bitter end, but it’s so hard to distill its purpose that you can’t tell if the film is opaque or if it simply offers nothing to see.
100
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
The film is a masterstroke of synthesis; whatever it borrows, it makes its own.
60
The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman
By keeping its characters at such a far remove, the film doesn’t condemn them nor cheer them on. At least, not on paper. In actuality, with all the crafty editing moves, slick music cues and stylish production design, Nocturama does the one thing it shouldn’t: it makes domestic terrorism look cool.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
As a portrait of French youth ridden by angst and anger toward the powers that be...Nocturama makes an intriguingly cinematic case for showing over telling. But as a depiction of how, and why, terrorists (or anarchists or whatever they are) can take down a city, it falls apart in the face of what happens in the real world.
90
Screen International by Lisa Nesselson
The protagonists are pathetic yet see themselves as bold and daring and in this Bonello has captured something about the present moment that rings absolutely true.
91
As much as I admire Nocturama (answer: an awful lot), locating exact points of admiration proves difficult when its pleasures are so purposefully alienating and bitter.
75
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Even if the film isn’t entirely to my taste, it’s a provocative and powerfully made piece of work.