Critics reviews

Two Friends is a film of recklessness and whimsy, but also sharp-felt pains and searing declarations of love and heartbreak among misfits... The film is sagely imbued by French cinema of the past, including the New Wave, the post-wave 80s and in everything in between—but is haunted neither by its specter nor those of his father, the estimable filmmaker Philippe Garrel. The actor's auspicious debut feature is all his own.

[A] rowdy, passion-fueled directorial debut... injecting fresh energy and much humor into the familiar French template of a lover torn between two radically different suitors.

Les Deux Amis is very handsomely filmed and, with no clumsiness in the slightest, rich in lovely film references that Louis Garrel grew up with, both as a person and as an actor... It is brimming with an infectious spontaneity that joyfully bursts forth, with refreshing candidness, from a screenplay that has been meticulously put together by Garrel and Christophe Honoré.

Elegantly shot, the whole thing nevertheless seems at once thin and over-cooked: Philippe Sarde's lush orchestral score feels excess to requirements, given the intimate, ultimately claustrophobic scale of the drama.

Co-written with Christophe Honore– in whose own Parisian three-hander, Love Songs, Garrel played a guy caught in a bisexual love triangle – the scenario offers up plenty of moments for the talented trio to strut their stuff, with Farahani literally doing just that during a memorable dive bar performance piece. But such scenes do not really build towards a powerful enough finale, in what ultimately feels like a lightweight Gallic bromance closer to Judd Apatow than to Jean-Luc Godard.