Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Jaoui neatly, gently, firmly slips political commentary into Let It Rain's articulate mayhem.
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Agnès Jaoui
Cast
Jean-Pierre Bacri,
Jamel Debbouze,
Agnès Jaoui,
Pascale Arbillot,
Frédéric Pierrot
Genre
Comedy
Agathe is a self-centered, workaholic feminist politician who, upon reluctantly returning to her home in the south of France to sort out her mother's affairs, runs for a local election. Upon her arrival, Agathe grudgingly agrees to take part in a documentary being made by the blundering duo of Karim, an aspiring filmmaker, and self-professed "reporter" Michel, on the subject of "successful women."
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Jaoui neatly, gently, firmly slips political commentary into Let It Rain's articulate mayhem.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Let It Rain touches on class issues, feminism, immigration and the particular challenges facing a single, driven career woman in her 40s. But it's graceful in presenting its ideas, and what emerges is not a polemic but a kind of snapshot of modern-day concerns.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Needlessly complicated, life already has more than enough petty dramas. Let It Rain may not be funny in a ha-ha sense, but it gave me an amused open-mouthed appreciation of life’s absurdities, including unanticipated nuisances like bad weather.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
This beautifully strange and affecting comedy, which Agnès Jaoui directed from a screenplay she wrote with her husband, Mr. Bacri, is about men who are weak and insecure, and one woman, Agathe, played superbly by Ms. Jaoui, coming to terms with the price of being strong.
The A.V. Club
There’s not much left to chew on when the movie is over; when Resnais adapted Jaoui and Bacri’s scripts, he added a visual counter-narrative that’s absent from Jaoui’s more functional approach. But a passing delight is a delight all the same.
The A.V. Club by Sam Adams
There’s not much left to chew on when the movie is over; when Resnais adapted Jaoui and Bacri’s scripts, he added a visual counter-narrative that’s absent from Jaoui’s more functional approach. But a passing delight is a delight all the same.
NPR by Ella Taylor
Jaoui's insights into the human struggle to find meaningful ways to live may not be especially profound, but she brings a warm particularity and a tough but tender compassion to her studies of congenital human discontent and the crazy, often self-defeating ways in which we strive to complete ourselves. If that's bourgeois, we might all plead guilty.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
At times Let It Rain recalls one of those Katharine Hepburn comedies where the New Woman gets cut down to size so as not to intimidate the Old-School Men. Yet the film so likably deflates the pompous and pumps up the humble that it's hard not to like.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
The interview sessions are all disastrous in one way or another; Let It Rain is at its wittiest when Michel flails around, grousing about his own divorce and child custody troubles without ever quite asking his interview subject an actual question
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
As simple and straightforward a movie as one is likely to find in theaters today.
Variety by Jordan Mintzer
Despite an initial forecast of smart laughs and witty tete-a-tetes, the French dramedy Let It Rain winds up being a partly cloudy affair that lacks the cohesiveness of Agnes Jaoui’s two previous features, "The Taste of Others" and "Look at Me."
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
This wistful little film is at just the right temperature.
The Hollywood Reporter
This is very much an actors’ film, not least because director-scripter Agnes Jaoui also appears in front of the camera in the well-seasoned role of Agathe Villanova.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
This is very much an actors’ film, not least because director-scripter Agnes Jaoui also appears in front of the camera in the well-seasoned role of Agathe Villanova.
Time Out by David Fear
While her focus has drifted away from the upper middle class, Jaoui’s sensibility remains rather middlebrow; there’s the distinct feeling that she’s preaching solely, albeit with impressive subtlety, to the same bourgie choir as before.
Boxoffice Magazine by Richard Mowe
The performances are excellent, even if none of the characters are all that likeable or involving.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Aiming to be a seriocomic movie of ideas but desperate not to offend or challenge, Let It Rain soon settles for being another smug comedy of bourgeois manners.
Loading recommendations...
Loading recommendations...