Critics reviews

With a plot so sparse that even a one-sentence summary threatens to spoil an hour of the movie, “Here” manages to present some of the most striking moving images in recent memory by leaning into the same minute details that its protagonist struggles to recognize in his own daily life.

Attuned as it is to [its protagonists'] out-of-placeness, [Here] doesn’t fully articulate their alienation, and it’s all the stronger for that restraint... From a lesser director, [the film's] oneiric detours... might have come across as contrived. In Devos’s hands, they are the culmination of a journey that began long before Here: a portrait of a city as a breathing organism, no less alive and mysterious than those who roam it.

In "Here," what matters is not what is offered, but the act of offering itself. This philosophical standpoint sounds rather grandiose when written down, but it's soothing and intriguing in Davos' approach. "Here" is experiential rather than story-driven. The big things happen not in the words, but through gestures, physical and emotional.

Embodied in Here is a calcifying of Devos’ most compelling sensibilities, drawing characterizations through an anti-exposition, unveiling detail through mannerism, allowing his actors to respond very slightly to their environments, and gathering these reactions into montage.

[A] hushed drama that gently rebuffs the beats of a love story even as it hints at one... [Here is a] painstakingly muted, luminously photographed testimony to connection, [in which] nothing much and everything happens — or could.

[Here is] a modestly proportioned movie of quiet magnificence, one that feels spun of gossamer summer light and rooted in unshakeable depths.

The act of cooking can be a radical and political act, as Devos seems to recognize, rendering Here a compelling testament to collective care... Something as simple as a bowl of soup becomes an unwavering declaration of existence and resilience.

It’s as if Devos conceptualizes the camera as an extension not just of the eye, but of the finger, a mechanism for pointing at things and saying, “here,” in both senses of the word... [Here] thrusts a contemplation of worldliness into our hands with all the bald simplicity with which one might extend an unexpected container full of soup to a friend.

The film's docu-fiction approach, combined with its slow-cinema narrative, captures the essence of humanism found in seemingly mundane moments often overlooked in daily life... Here presents its message with refreshing honesty and simplicity, subverting conventional wisdom and on-screen romance tropes.

Devos’ films can feel overly studied, slick to the point of being contrived, yet with each passing work––each reduction to the most potent flavors––he edges closer to something truly great. Here is his finest yet, an almost-perfect little film.

A quietly overwhelming study of human connection and our relationship with the natural world. Hardly a conventional love story, but achingly tender nonetheless, Here is fully present and dazzlingly alive.

Landscape, countryside and the built environment are integral characters in this lowkey love story that relies on Grimm Vendekerckhove’s exquisite camerawork and Devos’ spare dialogue to tell its charmingly cinematic story.