Opiniones de Metacritic

Wiseman has made a vocation out of filming what is right in front of him, and he applies that schematic to a dead woman whose words are all that remain. Her husband did not see her, but we will.

Though A Couple is [Wiseman's] first narrative feature in 20 years, the narrative structure documents history by fashioning Sophia’s diaries and letters as a performance.

It is a thoroughly intelligent production, a film festival event that could not exist in the rough-and-tumble of regular movie distribution but will I hope find a home on streaming services.

The result is an expressive and moving portrait of a tempestuous marriage, one told with elan that feels rich in feeling even if its entire budget probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of croissants on an average film shoot in France.

Even at 63 minutes, A Couple is not an easy sit. It took me three viewings before I was able to become absorbed in it — to settle into the rhythms of Boutefeu’s performance, to find the monologues less monotonous, to admire the beauty of the garden that Wiseman uses so calmingly to counterpoint the anger of Sophia’s words.

A Couple ultimately constitutes not so much a footnote to Frederick Wiseman’s storied career as a beguiling little doodle in its margins.

The final film is elegant and empathetic, but never quite emotionally involving: For all its rich, heightened articulation of a woman’s distress and unrest, the sense of a life being academically magnified under glass never quite leaves the endeavor.

I couldn’t bear another minute of A Couple, but I’m perfectly happy it exists.

While it’s great to see an example of a filmmaker refusing to rest on his laurels or stay inside the nearly defined box of his cultural reputation, a film must be a film – not just a concept. Un Couple never quite manages to transcend its origins as a precious pandemic project.

Performance aside, the key issue is that endless griping about a shitty marriage – even the marriage of arguably the pre-eminent figure of 19th century literature – is a drag.