Les fantômes d'Ismaël

As many have said, the premise of this film is very good, but it is lost in a mess of structure that would shame must university film society. It is a number of stories within a story, which lose momentum as the film continues. The main plot is the sudden reappearance of a film maker's wife after an absence of 21 years, but this is submerged by unnecessary interludes.

I watched the film at the French Film Festival in Sydney, and throughout the film people trickled out, not returning. What kept me was the excellent acting as ever from Cotillard and Gainsbourg, but you honestly wonder why and how they signed up for such a messy screenplay.

If this film was a blind date, it would talk erratically at you for nearly two hours, then leave abruptly for no reason. Avoid.

This film is a stinker. The premise seems interesting enough - a woman disappeared 20 years earlier, the husband and family not sure if she was dead. Other than that, the film goes downhill fast. The plot is boring, and the film jumps around to various sub-plots. The dialog is bad - the characters speak in a way that you shake your head and say "Who speaks like that in real life?" Not sure if it's a translation issue, but this seems to be consistent throughout the movie. It's basically a movie about the dialog, not so much the weak, unbelievable story. You really don't care about the characters. To add to the torture, the movie is over 2 hours long, so the suffering is extended. Avoid it like the plague.

I watched the whole film, but still have no idea what the story is about. The film starts off interesting, but becomes increasingly disjointed as time goes on. I cannot understand what it is about towards the end.

I saw this film up in Cambridge, with a sophisticated crowd and more than half the audience walked out.

I am all for narrative complexity, but pretentiousness and complexity for the sake of complexity is artificial and pompous.

I think the only people who like this film are self conscious lowbrow audience that simply assumes its convolution has some meaning that escaped them, or that throwing in disjointed and out of place ad frankly random surreal elements is somehow a good onto itself.

In the end, despite recruitment of solid acting talent, this is just an amazingly bad film.

The basis for a good film is always a good screenplay. Because the screenplay of 'Les fantômes d'Ismaël' is a mess, the film is a failure. What is undoubtedly meant as an intelligent multi-layered story highlighting the many aspects in the life of a film maker, is in reality an incomprehensible hodgepodge of subplots going nowhere.

Right from the very beginning, the viewer is confused. The first few scenes are not scenes from the film we're watching, but from a film within the film, which is being shot by lead character Ismaël. The main plot item, however, is the return of his wife, who has been missing for 20 years and was presumed dead. This in itself can be fine material for a well-acted drama, exploring the way the husband, his girlfriend and his long lost wife cope with this new situation. With multiple award winning actresses like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard on hand, this would seem to be the most logical option.

Instead, the viewer is offered a myriad of increasingly complicated side-stories, flash backs and dream-like sequences, culminating in a laughable scene of the tormented film maker shooting his own executive producer by accident. I have no doubt this film tries to make a point, but I'm afraid only the director knows which one. Unless you're a fan of French pseudo-intellectual art-house dramas, this film is to be avoided.