Critic Reviews

Resnais’ new film, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, is ostensibly an adaptation of two unrelated plays by Jean Anouilh: "Eurydice" (1941) and "Dear Antoine": Or, "The Love That Failed" (1971). However, Resnais’ methods of adaptation — placing one play within the other, and then refracting its dialogue across multiple characters and layers of reality — quickly eclipse the source material.

A testament to [Resnais'] positive outlook on not only the possibility of cinema, but the possibilities of life.

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet is a sly, elegant meditation on the relationship between reality and artifice. But it is a thought-experiment driven above all by emotion.

There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart.

The film is touching, but more than that it’s wise, witty and thought-provoking.

What elevates the film is a pervasive, palpable sense of loss — between lover and beloved, young and old, stage and screen.

A crafty, brainy and uniquely stirring concoction.

The cumulative effect is occasionally dizzying but transparent, a frantic attempt to cram themes into cinematic conceit.

Perhaps the richest of Resnais's recent efforts.

The result is complex yet lighthearted, as diverting as it is meditative. Resnais uses contrapuntal editing — one of his trademarks — as well as artificial settings, special effects, split screens, cinematic references and anachronistic devices to keep viewers tipsily off-balance.