Strictly average movie

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

If I were to attempt a comparison, I'd think of Mexico's interesting film "Japón." But comparisons are tricky, since they can never capture more than bits and pieces -- and that includes remakes as well.The languor of this film is consistent with its subject and its theme. Likewise the cinematic device of reflection, full of suggestion without actually insulting the viewer's intelligence by having to show every scene or expression straight on. Perhaps only an old person can appreciate it fully, sensing how solitude gradually creeping into one's life as one ages tends to alter perceptions even of the most common sort. Everything slows down with age. Self-image lingers longest, and to attempt rejuvenation proves futile in the end. At last there is resignation, and maybe a kind of peace.Given all this, I find no fault with anything except possibly the lack of effective close-ups or more incisive dialogue in the film. Even John Malkovich deserves a chance to prove he is uncharacteristically not just part of a dramatic frieze.

This film is really awful, in my opinion. It tries to be profound, moving, humanist and everything, but the only image actually communicated through it is one of a boring old (Oliveira obviously being in his nineties) classicist, snobbishly holding his nose at all the puerile excesses of mainstream, popular entertainment cinema; or, for that part, the more bewitched strains of art cinema. It makes me real mad: this passes itself of as Art, but is really nothing more than REACTION, imposing the sanctity of Time and the (male) Body, the Home and the Family. Why we even go to the movies, the sheer fun and fascination of cinema, the possession of the screen, the delirium of the moving image, is passed of as something for all those mindless, illiterate adolescents, out of touch (thankfully) with the eternal laws of the Masterpiece, the bourgeois privations around art that we´d better do without. Shame really, with the waste of talent going on here: Michel Piccoli is, arguably, one of the greatest french actors of all time, and it´s not that he´s bad here, he just doesn´t have anything to work with. On this point, check out Marco Ferreri´s La Grande Bouffe, one of the most deliriously unpleasant films ever, and with the equally great Philippe Noiret; or Claude Faraldo´s Themroc, where Piccoli coughs, grunts and laughs his way through the role of a modern day cave man and barbarian, a film without a hint of legible/audible dialogue. Rate: 0.5 out of 10000.

Tedium taken to a level too boring to describe. Scenes go on and on ...... The actors look very uneasy at least I think they do as most of the time the light is very bad or the Director has set afocus on something removed from the characters.John Malkovitch is wasted and Piccoli seems bemused by the lack of any coherent storyline.An experience for insomniacs only.

Touching is the first word that comes to mind. de Oliveira goes to Cannes every year and delivers the best movie and doesn't get any prize. He's 93 and he still puts out more than a movie a year and what movies I must say. Stunning beauty and poetry come out of this work. This movie sees an amazing performance by Michel Piccoli; he goes right in deep into his character. Merci Beaucoup Mr De Oliveira!