Sólo los niños van al cielo

I do not think I have ever in my life seen such a bland movie. To watch 90 minutes and wait and even more the wait. Time goes by and I am still waiting for a logical explanation as to why this film was created. But there is no explanation and suddenly it was over.

I've seen thousands movies in my life.

But honestly this movie is the worst.

I have given the film a rating of 1 as it is not possible to give the film less and in reality the film is not suitable to get any numbers at all.

In fact, the film is so meaningless that it should not have existed at all.

This movie was a bit disappointing, Ozon being one of my favorite directors especially for Swimming Pool among others.

It starts as a French family drama, turns into a Hollywood like movie you would normally expect from Spielberg in the supermarket scene and then back to a French movie. I even thought maybe Ozon is considering some Hollywood adventure! The movie goes into the life of a single mother who is stuck in life and could only turn it around with a miracle. And that is exactly what happens, after she starts dating another worker in the factory she gets pregnant and Ricky, a super cute baby, is born.

Ozon takes on French workers' stagnant, even hopeless life on a warmer tone than you normally would expect in a such story. Their life is no fun and only miracles and disasters can force them to rethink their situations.

Editing of the movie was the weak link, as it seemed like the director wanted to get the film flowing by editing and not naturally by the storyline. That approach did not really pay off. It gave me the impression that the movie was shot hastily.

Yet, I was lucky to see the film during its Istanbul Film festival screening and attended the Q&A session after the film. I was glad to see him as a director who likes experimenting with film, even after so many achievements so far. He is a natural movie maker that gets emotions across the screen easily. So I will be on the outlook for his next movie as usual.

I saw this today as part of the Alliance Francais film festival in Brisbane.

While not Ozon's best effort (for me Swimming Pool remains his masterpiece) this is an intriguing whimsical story with disturbing undertones of obsession and sibling rivalry.

The story really makes most sense when considered from Lisa's point of view (a powerhouse performance by the young actress here). I took the fantasy aspect of the story to be a metaphorical expression of integrating new members into a tightly knit family of two (and not just Ricky either). This magical realism is very strongly grounded in the emotions of the characters and this is what gives the movie impact in spite of its imperfections. Ozon likes operating on the boundary of fact/fiction mind/reality, and takes huge gambles here which don't always come off--but in the moments they do the film is very satisfying.

I realize that some Ozon fans are disappointed by the outcome of this project, as can be seen by another review here on IMDb also. I do understand that some might feel that Ozon should have better stick to what he was doing. But I think he did a very good job here. Behind all the "normality" of the movie, there lies an ambiguity. The movie deals with loss or better how people react to loss.

Loss of material things, emotional loss and of course other losses too. That's what I felt watching it, but I can also tell, that some people might have gotten a completely different vibe from the movie. And that is what makes it special. It might not be his best movie (I haven't watched all his movies), but it is pretty good. Especially since it disguises itself as normal movie ... well as normal as an Ozon movie can be of course.

This is not a real review, it should be taken more as a collection of impressions on the film.

So, this film is without a doubt particular and also very strange, but I can't understand its moral, I can't understand what it wants to convey because if it wants to convey love and the desire for freedom it doesn't succeed so well. We also need to talk about the choices of the characters in the film because the film progresses to the sound of very forced wrong choices by all the characters and this becomes a little tiring in the long run throughout the course of the film. So in summary the film is also entertaining, but given that the film wants to be deep and pretentious we must also evaluate the fact that everything that leads to the final moral is very forced and without the slightest sense.