Click here to copy URL

On a Half Clear Morning

France

2021

Bruno Dumont

Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay, Juliane Köhler ...

5.2

604

Drama. Comedy A celebrity television journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Xan Brooks The Guardian	"Dumont’s secular crisis-of-faith drama has much to say about the corrosive effect of our 24-hour news culture. But it is also indecisive and compromised (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United States	Mark Olsen Los Angeles Times	"In part because of the depth of Seydoux's performance, the film becomes less an allegory of a nation and more a gripping character study, a portrait of a mask of personal and professional regard slowly slipping away"	POS
United States	Anna Smith Deadline	"This begins as an intriguing portrait of fame, but by the time France has been asked for her twentieth selfie, it’s as wearing on the audience as it is on her."	NEU
United States	Elena Lazic The Playlist	"Through the character of France, Dumont crafts an entertaining critique of the media more interesting for its formal and stylistic oddities than for its arguments"	POS
United States	Ben Croll The Wrap	"Seydoux finds ways to move and emote through her Noh mask, and Dumont finds interesting avenues to explore (...) Only it’s all too much, too long, too repetitive, too one-note"	NEU
Canada	Dustin Chang Screen Anarchy	"Dumont finds the post-irony era belief system we deserve in France de Muers, the flawed infotainment queen, as our new god"	POS
United States	Ignatiy Vishnevetsky AV Club	"An uneven blend of satire and melodrama (...) The film (which is, among other things, overlong) never completely fits together (...) The drama is intentionally cryptic and remote"	NEG
United States	Boyd van Hoeij The Hollywood Reporter	"What’s odd is that Dumont, who also wrote the script, keeps a certain distance from his subject throughout the film and Seydoux only rarely manages to bridge that distance"	NEU
United States	David Katz The Film Stage	"Its sense of experimentation makes it a good, characteristic Dumont film. There's much playfulness on the level of tone and narrative, staking out a roomy runtime to have some fun with the codes of French bourgeois filmmaking"	POS
United States	Peter Debruge Variety	"A tough-to-untangle mix of classic screwball comedy and straight-faced critique, this caustic attack on French TV news sends too many mixed messages."	NEU
United States	Natalia Keogan Paste Magazine	"It rewards those who are willing to take the journey without a promise of clear resolution (...) It remains tethered to its source material: Nothing in this world is clear, so why not make it entertaining instead of make sense?"	POS
United Kingdom	Jonathan Romney Screendaily	"This satire about media, emotional alienation and – need it be said? – the state of the nation makes its point quickly and forcefully before going on to make it again and again, with different modulations, for over two hours."	NEU
Ireland	Donald Clarke Irish Times	"Léa Seydoux has never been better (...) Bruno Dumont is as gloriously gifted as he is unpredictable (...) Rating: ★★★★½ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Ben Kenigsberg rogerebert.com	"Clearly there are layers in Dumont's satire that only those familiar with the French news media will catch"	NEU
	Fabien Lemercier Cineuropa	"Bruno Dumont holds a magnifying glass and a mirror over the conflicting ambitions and the new awareness of a disturbing truth about the state of the country"	POS
United Kingdom	Wendy Ide The Guardian	"[It] is watchable, if not subtle, but the picture labours its message with an overstretched running time and an oddly anticlimactic structure (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United States	Chuck Bowen Slant	"The film's melodramatic crescendos are so unconvincing that they scan as sarcastic, which may be Dumont's intent (...) 'France' is so well defended against its mediocrity (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Robbie Collin Telegraph	"Thanks to [Léa Seydoux's] performance, 'France' is never less than intriguing. But it's also extremely hard to get along with (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.