The Big Picture | Telescope Film
The Big Picture

The Big Picture (L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie)

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Paul Exben's life is defined by success: he is a partner at one of Paris's most exclusive law firms, he has a big salary, a big house, a glamorous wife and two picture perfect sons. But when he finds out that Sarah, his wife, is cheating on him with Greg Kremer, a local photographer, a rush of blood provokes Paul into a fatal error...

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What are critics saying?

90

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

Paul is not a sociopath like Tom Ripley, and the movie does not convey the same diabolical Hitchcockian sense of being manipulated by a slightly sadistic master puppeteer. As the story sprawls across the screen, it darts from one incident to the next as though it were inventing itself as it goes along.

88

New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme

Much of the plot stretches credulity, but the way it's constructed keeps tension high.

75

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

For most of the way, right up until a hastily contrived and deeply unsatisfying ending, the film perceptively sketches a fractured identity, a man who enters a new life carrying painful remnants of the old.

75

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

The movie feels loose and unpredictable. You're never sure where Paul or the story is going, and while that makes The Big Picture unexpectedly gripping for much of its running time, the shapelessness ultimately wins out.

75

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Calvin Wilson

The Big Picture ends perhaps a bit too ambiguously, but there's something refreshing about its faith in the moviegoer's intelligence.

75

Portland Oregonian by Marc Mohan

A decent-enough treat for fans of this particular Gallic genre.

70

Village Voice

For most of the film, Lartigau creates the tension of a Hitchcockian thriller solely through Paul's interior struggle.

70

NPR by Mark Jenkins

The Big Picture has been compared to "The Talented Mr. Ripley," the twice-filmed Patricia Highsmith novel about a sociopath who kills and then impersonates a rich acquaintance. But in spirit it's closer to Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 "The Passenger," with Jack Nicholson as an existential adventurer who poses as a dead stranger.

70

Village Voice by Chris Packham

For most of the film, Lartigau creates the tension of a Hitchcockian thriller solely through Paul's interior struggle.

60

Total Film by Tom Dawson

Built around a multilayered performance from Duris, it's a film unafraid to pose more questions than it answers.

60

Time Out by David Fear

The Big Picture is really Duris's picture; the actor toggles effortlessly between arrogant, feral, remorseful and ruthless as the plot throws one curveball after the next.

60

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The direction from Eric Lartigau keeps things moving along fast and furious: preposterous it may be, the movie is carried off with some style.

60

Empire by David Parkinson

A few plot holes hold back what is otherwise a well cast and compelling picture.

50

Slant Magazine

Like its protagonist, the film sells out for the security of convention and complacency.