Metacritic-Rezensionen

Ernaux’s precise and thoughtful commentary connects the images to memories, discovering yet another harvest from the well-cultivated field of her autobiography.

Memory is also, I think, one reason we watch movies like this, which with its lapidary narration and melancholic images — with its laughing children, its difficult smiles and its ghosts — movingly pairs you with Ernaux and with the world that she has so brilliantly made.

This moving, probing, beautifully written film doesn’t completely eschew nostalgia, but like Ernaux’s books, it treats the past as a prism, casting varying light depending on how, when and where it’s held.

As a born writer, Annie’s commentary is a time capsule of her life half a century ago but also, by extension, of fascinating changes afoot in France itself.

Cheap gags aside, The Super 8 Years comes together as an effective gloss on a life that has already been carefully examined.

The film plays as one extended memory—sometimes more bitter, sometimes more sweet, always a combination of both.

The compact documentary is ultimately more an exercise for the filmmakers than it is a truly rewarding cinematic experience for the audience.

The slow-motion breakdown of a family is tracked by a lens that initially sought out intimacy and celebration, but finds itself, as the years pass, increasingly distanced from figures caught in its time capsule of a frame.