Ismael's Ghosts
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: March 23, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesGlenn KennyMar 22, 2018
As is customary in Mr. Desplechin’s work, there’s a lot of dialogue in Ismael’s Ghosts, but this movie’s nerve endings vibrate most avidly and tenderly in scenes where not a word is spoken. Read full review
91
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 27, 2017
Desplechin has frequently acknowledged his debt to psychoanalysis in general and Lacan specifically, but never had he dared plunge as deeply into the mysteries of the psyche as he does here. [Cannes Version] Read full review
90
Screen DailyLisa NesselsonMay 27, 2017
Desplechin delivers with flying colours thanks to an excellent cast and a sometimes serious, sometimes funny story that never lets up or becomes predictable. [Cannes Version] Read full review
85
TheWrapDave WhiteMar 22, 2018
This is filmmaking that demands to be noticed, if not always trusted. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 5, 2018
The movie before us may be far from perfect, but with some crucial narrative and thematic tissue restored, it plays much more clearly, and satisfyingly, as an evocation of Ismael's emotional and psychological rupture, in his life as well as his art. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijMay 27, 2017
The use of both dialogue and film language is sophisticated; sometimes Ismael’s Ghosts borders on overripe melodrama, while at other times it relies on genre tropes but then gives them an unexpected twist. [Cannes Version] Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiApr 11, 2018
Ismael’s Ghosts drops a number of seemingly disparate ingredients into a stew that ends up coalescing into a satisfying treat, full of surprises and flavors you wouldn’t expect. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 18, 2018
A particularly strong element is the story of Carlotta’s father, played with arresting intensity by Laszlo Szabo. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 24, 2018
Even coming from a filmmaker who walks a narrative line like a drunk driver tipsily failing to prove his sobriety, this is scattershot stuff—and maybe too much movie for one movie. Yet it’s been made with enough brio and confidence to drag a chaos-tolerant viewer along for the ride. You want to relent to its winding navigation as fully as the director himself has surrendered the wheel to his muse. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonMar 23, 2018
I’ve seen Ismael’s Ghosts twice, and both times I got the feeling that I was missing something. The film feels very personal, as if writer/director Arnaud Desplechin were sorting out his thoughts, processes and demons onscreen. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSam C. Mac
Arnaud Desplechin’s latest simultaneously collapses and expands his entire body of work, reflexively revealing its many layers, like a pop-up book. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlMar 22, 2018
There’s no way around it: The whole, here, is a mess. Even with the extra minutes, the film seems unfinished, the connections among its disparate scenarios vague and arbitrary. But outside of the espionage-movie and poor-lonely-director-dude-can’t-stop-getting-laid interludes, many of those scenarios unsettle, provoke (intentional) laughter, or prove engrossing, especially in their doublings and mysteries. Read full review
67
The PlaylistEli FineMar 22, 2018
The first two acts of “Ismael” are satisfying enough to excuse its shark-jumping third. While Desplechin’s new film isn’t great by a long stretch, it does manage to thoroughly scratch a very particular Franco-cine-phile itch. And this hardly needs to be said, but for longtime fans of Desplechin, Ismael’s Ghosts is a must-see. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnMay 27, 2017
At its best, the movie is a freewheeling gambit, hurtling in multiple directions at once, and it’s thrilling to watch Desplechin try juggle them all. [Cannes Version] Read full review
63
Washington PostChristopher KompanekApr 3, 2018
Unfortunately, Desplechin stuffs too many subplots into the film, diminishing the power of his central conceit — that our most persistent ghosts are the living whom we’ve failed. Read full review
60
EmpireDavid ParkinsonJun 4, 2018
This director's cut might smack of self-indulgence, but it also says much about love and loss and the language of an artform that flirts with realism while remaining an illusion. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 27, 2017
Amalric transcends mere dishevelment here: in some scenes which flash back to the start of his relationship with Sylvia, the former Bond villain looks like a pile of leaves with a coat thrown on top. [Cannes Version] Read full review
58
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 27, 2017
Desplechin lashes storylines and filmmaking gimmickry in to the one ginormous stewpot with gusto, slams the lid down on it and promptly forgets to turn on the heat. [Cannes Version] Read full review
57
Paste MagazineTim GriersonMay 27, 2017
Did Desplechin get seduced by the problems that plague filmmakers like himself? If so, he’s done a disservice to his own work, which needed a solution to its deficiencies—not an extended reverie that merely highlights them. [Cannes Version] Read full review
40
Time OutDave CalhounMar 23, 2018
The more the story unravels, the more of a sorry mess this feels. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 27, 2017
In its own weird way, Ismael’s Ghosts has something profound to say about the lingering pain of past relationships and the threat they still pose to the present, but it does so in such a needlessly complicated fashion, we can’t help but be overwhelmed. [Cannes Version] Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 27, 2017
It isn't that it's hard going: it simply can't decide what it wants to be. [Cannes Version] Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 27, 2017
This is an unfinished doodle of a film, a madly self-indulgent jeu d’esprit without substance: a sketch, or jumble of sketches, a ragbag of half-cooked ideas for other movie projects, I suspect, that the director has attempt to salvage and jam together. [Cannes Version] Read full review
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