Cannes. Les Amities Malefiques.

Bernard Besserglik on the film that opened the International Critics' Week in Cannes, Les Amities Malefiques (Poison Friends): "[Emmanuel] Bourdieu, the son of a noted academic and formerly a writer for directors Arnaud Desplechin and Nicole Garcia, convincingly portrays the tensions of university life, particularly the role-playing and testing of limits among students. However, the movie, absorbing rather than gripping, does not really deliver on the promise of malfeasance contained in the title."

In Variety, Lisa Nesselson finds it "a movie so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now. Miraculously, pic explores the pretentiousness of the Paris-centric literary scene without pretension."

Update, 5/22: Lee Marshall in Screen Daily: "Timeless in its best sequences, dated in its worst, the film has good dramatic bone structure but lacks a certain punch."

Posted by dwhudson at May 19, 2006 4:23 PM