SummaryFrance de Meurs (Léa Seydoux) is a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist whose career, homelife, and psychological stability are shaken after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy Paris street. This accident triggers a series of self-reckonings, as well as a strange romance that proves impossible to shake.
Directed By:Bruno Dumont
Written By:Bruno Dumont
France
Metascore
Mixed or Average
57
User score
Mixed or Average
5.5
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
43% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
57% Mixed
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Jan 2, 2023
90
We’re accustomed to Dumont leapfrogging from one genre to another, but he has seldom attempted so many swerves and shifts as he manages here.
Dec 10, 2021
80
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.
User score
Mixed or Average
29% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
64% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
7% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Jan 16, 2022
10
Great movie, I don't know why it has so low ratings. And Lea Seydoux is stunning.
Apr 4, 2022
4
If ever there were a film that embodies the notion of "Life **** and then you die," this would be it. Writer-director Bruno Dumont's latest, a depressing cynical comedy-drama, takes the concept of weltschmerz to an entirely new level. That includes not only the content of the film's narrative, but also the agony that's inflicted upon audiences viewing this tediously slow, meandering, unfocused slog. Told from the perspective of an immensely popular French TV journalist who has everything that everyone supposedly wants -- fame, fortune, wealth, beauty -- the film follows her triumphs and tragedies, all of which leave her feeling eminently empty and depressed. Some of it is personal, some professional, and nearly always in matters of integrity, meaning and fulfillment, conditions that leave life affording us precious few joys. In some ways, the film could also be seen as a metaphor for the current state of society, most notably that of France (the nation) as reflected through the experiences of France de Meurs (the protagonist). The foregoing may be all well and good in theory, but it's sorely lacking where the execution of this production is concerned. Dumont truly seems to be striving for something here, but it ends up feeling more like "reaching" in the end. This overlong, often-vague, frequently repetitive, generally lost cinematic exercise truly is one well worth skipping.
Jan 6, 2022
75
In “France,” Dumont has not created a commentary on modern life, so don’t approach the movie looking for that. He’s made a movie about the consequences of modern life for one person, a portrait of contemporary mores as seen from the inside.
Dec 29, 2022
60
Whatever its flaws, this movie provides fans of French star Léa Seydoux with a treat.
Dec 10, 2021
50
In theory, that sort of self-victimization could be funny; in this reality, not so much.
Jul 16, 2021
50
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. It’s a shame, because somewhere within this sprawling piece is something audacious and playful.
Jul 16, 2021
40
Perhaps it is precisely Dumont’s point that satire and the real world have been converging for a long time, but this alone is not enough insight to sustain a movie that’s over two hours long and contains a protagonist few will warm to. for such a high-powered auteur/leading-lady collaboration, France feels decidedly unspectacular.
Jan 12, 2022
4
So here we have the story of a TV star who is rich, famous and unhappy. An ode to originality. Sure, it's not so simple after all, but it's also far from the intellectual fable its director clearly believes he's telling. It's difficult to see this film for what it is; a critique of the French media, when it focuses all its attention on a character as vain, empty and inconsequential as the one played by Léa Seydoux.
This I mention is not a reflection of her performance, simply of what her character is. She's just as empty and shallow as the world in which she moves, so when the story takes a turn and her character instead of giving the news becomes the news, due to a small accident in which she's involved. The script is unable to genuinely address what that implies and therefore expressing the emotional risk of living in the public eye lacks any real resonance. And more than anything else the film is incredibly monotonous. It has all the same tone throughout, and with the character and her surroundings being so hollow, the odyssey becomes tiresome and trivial.
Mostly because France isn't saying anything we don't already know about the facade and manipulation of television media, and evidently isn't providing a distinctive approach to it either.
Dec 17, 2021
4
(Mauro Lanari)
Dumont introduces us to a protagonist with persistent mood swings that would be caused by the accumulation of her personal, professional and road accidents. In reality, his direction full of incomprehensible slownesses or ellipses is more bipolar than the life of France de Meurs (pun for "France of Costums": "meurs" reads the same as "mœurs" which, exactly as for the Latin "mores", designates the common social habits or practices of a people or a nation), and of the velleitarian dramedy on the media and political Western system reduced to debordian infotainment there isn't much of both genres.
Production Company:
- 3B Productions
- Red Balloon Film
- Tea Time Film
- Ascent Film
- Scope Pictures
- Arte France Cinéma
- Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)
- Rai Cinema
- Ciné+
- Eurimages
- La Région Île-de-France
- Pictanovo
- Région Hauts-de-France
- Société des Producteurs de Cinéma et de Télévision (Procirep)
- Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral Belge
- Filmförderfonds Bayern
- Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein
- Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo (MiBACT)
- Apulia Film Commission
- SofiTVciné 7
- Cinémage 14
Release Date:Dec 10, 2021
Duration:2 h 13 m
Awards
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
Palic Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
Gijón International Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
