The Sentinel

While La Sentinelle doesn't end with a conventionally satisfying payoff, Desplechin's thoughtful and meticulously detailed direction offers many other rewards. Read full review

Although the thriller aspect of "La Sentinelle" doesn't quite add up, the film is still an absorbing, psychologically resonant portrait of French student life. As directed by Desplechin, the attractive young cast hardly seems to be acting. Read full review

What’s remarkable—and Kafkaesque—about La Sentinelle is how Desplechin grounds the phantasmagoric aspects of his tale in the details, routines, and conflicts of daily life. Read full review

A complex and truly original film. [19 Jul 1993, p.F7]

This creepy and cryptic early film from director Arnaud Desplechin isn't as assured as his MY SEX LIFE... (OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT), but it has its own intriguing charms. Read full review

Salinger’s a rather wan screen presence, and the film’s both overlong and undercooked; but the head, frequently seen in lingering close-up, is so realistically gruesome that you wind up transfixed anyhow. Read full review

Although the drama doesn't quite live up to its early promise, much of it is emotionally involving and intellectually stimulating. [22 May 1992, p.12]

While La Sentinelle is often a lively shaggy-dog story, it ultimately isn't much more than that. [01 Jan 1999]

My Sex Life, for all its virtues, was a bit conventional and bland, but The Sentinel is genuinely crazy and a lot more interesting, mainly because it has a meatier subject: the end of the cold war and what this means to French yuppies. Read full review

More than two hours in length, The Sentinel packs too much into a weird tale that shifts ground between political thriller and psychological drama -- too much to be completely comprehensible except to Desplechin himself. It would require a severe editing job to rescue it, even for the friendly art-house crowd. [19 May 1992]