Critic Reviews

Cold Water has the kind of emotional purity that puts it in a class by itself. Its blue fog envelops you.

Mr. Assayas succeeded in making a young person’s film when he was on the cusp of turning 40. He has said that he wanted Cold Water to feel like a movie from 1972. It doesn’t really, but, perhaps more remarkably, it’s so fresh it could have been made now.

Drawn from the director's personal memories of post-1968 excitement and disillusionment, the drama moves from surging emotional highs to melancholy lows, but it also pulses with a vibrant, moody energy that a 24-year delay from American screens has done nothing to diminish.

As Assayas himself has pointed out, the passing years have magically transformed a movie made in 1994 into a seeming product of post-1968 cultural turbulence and unresolved matters of the heart. It feels honest, in other words.

Mr. Assayas's screenplay is loose and uneventful, but his direction has more energy.

Equal parts arthouse cinema and coming-of-age drama, the influence of his tribute to teen rebellion remains deeply felt.