Get the latest gossip
‘Filmlovers!’ Review: Arnaud Desplechin Gets Back on Track With a Breezy but Thoughtful Ode to Cinephilia
Mixing documentary and autofiction, Arnaud Desplechin's 'Filmlovers!' is no stretch for him, but welcome comfort viewing after some wayward films.
French writer-director and Cannes regular Arnaud Desplechin brings that to the Croisette this year with “ Filmlovers!,” a duly warm and nostalgia-washed cine-valentine, but one with a little more to say than just, “Movies, amirite?” Indeed, the film’s somewhat inelegant English-language title risks concealing the more specific focus of this unassuming but winning hybrid documentary: The French title, “Spectateurs!,” makes clear this is first and foremost a celebration of spectatorship rather than filmmaking, probing the dynamics of cinema audiences and their relationship to the screen. One is pure documentary, mixing the director’s first-person reflections with talking-head interviews and a surfeit of lovingly chosen film clips that aren’t identified by title — Desplechin seemingly wanting to either prompt viewers’ own filmgoing memories or stoke their curiosity regarding scenes they don’t recall. Lest this all feel a bit too loose-fittingly general, Desplechin takes illuminating diversions into more particular fixations of his, including his forever haunted relationship as a viewer to Claude Lanzmann’s seminal documentary “Shoah,” and his ongoing grief over the untimely death of Indigenous American actor Misty Upham, who worked with the director on the aforementioned “Jimmy P.” As a friend and collaborator, he mourns Upham herself; as a spectator, he mourns the films she never got to make.
Or read this on Variety