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HOW I KILLED MY FATHER
"...exquisite French film...With 'How I
Killed My Father," the director Anne Fontaine has created a small,
chilly masterpiece that stings you like a touch of dry ice." --
Stephen Holden,
The New York Times
"... it's as if the director Anne Fontaine is trying to say that every
nationality--and generation--needs its own austere and mechanical
'Ordinary People.' It is just as grimly and pointedly plotted...Viewing
this underdramatized but overstated film is like watching a transcript
of a therapy session brought to humdrum life by some Freudian puppet...Told
in flashback, 'How I Killed My Father' is a kind of murder mystery,
but eventually the only victim is the audience's interest --the picture
is uncompromising and inauspicious." -- Elvis
Mitchell, The New York Times
"'How I Killed My Father' demonstrates why nowadays the best thing
you can say about an American movie is that it plays like a French
film...the film never lapses into banality or sentimentality...the
tragic inevitability of Oedipal conflict is generally expressed in
emotional half-notes, at which French acting at its best is remarkably
proficient. In this context, Mr. Bouquet, Mr. Berling, Ms. RE`gnier,
Mr. Guillon and Amira Casar shine with a special luminosity in a time
of splendid acting ensembles." -- Andrew
Sarris, The New York Observer
"The murder is metaphorical in Anne Fontaine's exquisite French character
study 'How I Killed My Father,' but it's still shocking in the quietest,
most well-mannered of ways...as in her 1997 film 'Dry Cleaning,' the
filmmaker doesn't resort to easy telegraphy. The script is a steady
accretion of small stabs to the heart, propelling the gorgeous performances
of Berling, Regnier, and especially the 76-year-old French cinema
veteran Bouquet, whose every faint smile is killing." - Lisa
Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
Michel Bouquet's performance makes Anne Fontaine's 'How I Killed My
Father' required viewing...It's a scary rendition of an old charmer,
and there seems to be a whole lifetime of understanding behind it."
-- Peter Rainer, New York
"The seething tension that lures us through 'How I Killed My Father'
with unassuming force comes from the ways in which Fontaine, her co-writer,
Jacques Fieschi, and her superb cast manipulate our alliances...This
is one of those coolly understanding films in which everyone is right
and everyone is wrong and everyone loses something big, except the
audience." -- |
