Avis des critiques

The melodrama begins at such a high pitch in Desplechin’s latest, you might think it has nowhere to go but down, yet this earnestly inflamed tale of art, grief, betrayal and all-consuming amour on steroids keeps finding new, hysterical ways to surprise.

Where [Desplechin] has often waxed autobiographical, [in Two Pianos] he ventures into seemingly less personal territory but with unmistakeable flourishes of his signature bravura style, putting music as ever to the expressive fore.

Two Pianos has the complexity, mystery, and ambiguity of [Desplechin's] best films... The film isn’t free of narrative problems... but it observes its protagonists with both generosity and complexity.

Two Pianos amounts to a glimpse into a brief, tumultuous time in these two people’s lives... Desplechin’s ability to find the raw, human qualities in that experience––and to respect them enough to understand that they can stand on their own rather than be weighed down by narrative contrivance––makes his movie an ideal example of what a prestige film should be.

With its complexity, beauty, and emotional depth, Two Pianos stands as one of Desplechin’s most affecting works. It is a film about love, regret, art, and above all about life itself: the roads we take, the roads we abandon, and the roads to be travelled upon.

Even though each individual idea here is fascinating, Desplechin doesn’t give any of them enough screentime to really delve into them, forcing himself to settle for just scratching the surface.

Desplechin indulges in a few of his trademark stylistic and storytelling tics... but only sparingly. His suave and responsive filmmaking, characterized here by Paul Guilhaume’s light-sensitive and fine-grained cinematography, usually works as a suave smile to belie the bitter ambivalence of his drama, but Two Pianos simply goes down smooth.

[Two Pianos is a film of] exceptional quality and density... subtly enhanced by narrative complexity, the paradoxical depth of the main characters and a flicker of hope in the familiar, nebulous twilight of Arnaud Desplechin’s cinema.

[Desplechin] revisits familiar themes here, but there’s something fresh, too, in the story’s structure and his approach... f at times the dramatic balance feels off, or the passion exasperating in particularly Gallic ways (l’amour!), Desplechin and his superb cast convincingly bring the angsty emotions to a place of unexpected brightness and clarity.