Dan Fainaru

It is pleasant to watch, needs a much stronger structure to hold it together.

Seydoux never manages to assemble all of Celestine’s various features into one convincing character, while the social, sexual and political nuances in the script are well-established clichés.

If there is a star in this show, it is certainly cinematographer Nathalie Moliavko-Visotzky whose work stands out as the one perfectly valid reason to watch this film.

The clichés start to arrive in rapid succession. Even the most moving performances cannot disguise their obviousness.

Less like a drama than a statement, Chevalier’s characters do not grow but diminish. None of Attenberg’s charming insouciance is in evidence here although she never defines any of her victims too precisely, she is blunt and even cruel at times.

One thing missing in Pablo Larrain’s new movie is a touch of Luis Bunuel. Without it, the fierce sarcastic attack he launches against the Catholic Church looks a little too much like a self-motivated settling of accounts, terribly angry and lacking a perspective that would put it all into the right context.