Les amitiés maléfiques
Strand Releasing | Release Date: April 27, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
While the young people chatter about life and literature with sometimes overbearing self-satisfaction, the astute filmmaker observes their pretentious gum-flapping with a mixture of amusement, compassion, and wised-up rue. Read full review
90
VarietyLisa Nesselson
A movie so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Bourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Not for nothing did this movie open the International Critics' Week (and win its grand prize) last year at Cannes; Poison Friends may be all talk, but it's cut like an action flick. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, Poison Friends is gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Four university students band together under the obnoxious mentorship of Andre (Thibault Vinçon), who is meant to be brilliant but, to me at least, seemed all too obviously a poseur. His betrayal of his friends deepens the movie. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
This sly, subtle and very French psychological drama dissects the relationship between three insecure Sorbonne students and their deeply flawed idol. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
Poison Friends deftly sketches the fine line - is there one? - between "critic" and "loser." Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
If, unlike his friends, you don't take anything Andre says seriously, there is a wicked sense of fun about it, and you may even see a little of yourself in one of the characters. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It's intellectual without being dry, dramatic without bombast, smart without posturing. Its characters and milieu are very well drawn, and Andre is one of the more intriguing and convincing fictional creations in recent film. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
As a group portrait of apprentice intellectuals the film has an almost documentary accuracy. It also has a degree of energy, an appetite for strong feelings and big ideas, notably missing in American movies about the young and overeducated, which tend to specialize in mumbled ironies and tiny epiphanies. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
A biting academic fable about the importance of aggression over intellect. Read full review
60
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
It is kept listenable--and watchable--because Bourdieu uses his knowledge of these people with winning ease. The story's conclusion verges on the grim, and it underscores Bourdieu's presumable theme: student life and talk are the last real vacations in many lives. Read full review
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