Critics reviews

The film’s mighty originality—in its drama, tone, methods, images, dialogue, performance, and political audacity—is both immensely inspiring to other filmmakers and, even now, at sixty years’ remove, hard for audiences to assimilate. Moreover, its achievements and its difficulties both liken it to and distinguish it from the works of Rozier’s better-known French contemporaries. It’s a film that belongs to its historical moment but also reflects it from the outside like a magnifying mirror—and these qualities suggest the manifold, elusive nature of Rozier’s art.

Rozier's methods were improvisational, and evidently he cast on appearance and manner rather than on acting talent. The result is a bit long-winded but très nouvelle vague, with a hidden camera tailing the characters through summery Paris streets, a bunch of Franco pop oddities on the soundtrack, and a quick glimpse of Jean-Claude Brialy.

Rozier’s graceful style is a mixture of sweetness and light, devoid of pretension and open to youthful energies. Recommended.

Rozier gets very nice performances out of his youthful cast, and there is a measure of intelligent calculation to everything he does. It's the kind of calculation which sometimes (when satirising the tv milieu or adolescent self-delusion) settles for easy laughs, and sometimes tries to hide behind a spontaneous acting style... He also has a habit of suggesting emotional depths without a willingness to explore them. For all its charm, I'm afraid the post-Godard generation will find "Adieu Philippine" a bit short on both cinema and verite.