Besides the frank, blithe sex scenes, a melodramatic ending aims to banish any last hope of gemütlichkeit, but the film comes to feel curiously incomplete, like one long fretful afternoon.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Overall tone lies somewhere between Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in performances and look, with a modest tech package.
Cloud 9 is most moving when it steps quietly into the gap between physical decline and the persistence, at full blast, of unfulfilled longing and desire.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
All the more disappointing, then, when what has been a celebration of last-ditch passion slides abruptly into a cautionary tale. Until that point the movie's refreshingly unbiased tone allows us to make our own moral judgments, teasing us with the possibility that, occasionally, the scarlet woman can escape unbranded. I, for one, was rooting for her.
Ultimately though, apart from the ages of the protagonists, Cloud 9 is a standard-issue infidelity story.
Disappointing third act to this brave drama about love and sex in our later years.
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The film may attract older moviegoers curious to see their generation represented onscreen doing what comes naturally for once. It's doubtful that the general audience will be so inclined.
Cloud 9's plot is thin, the conflict lazy, and the resolution sudden and unsurprising. That's a shame, because stronger development in the story department might have made this film a minor sensation.
Seldom has any movie shown so much geriatric sex and full-frontal nudity (male and female). But, thanks to Dresen, it is all done with taste and sensitivity.