Avis des critiques

In Winter Boy, Honoré pulls no punches, emotionally or physically... [His] filmmaking is so earnest and honest - and Kircher’s performance so vulnerable yet defiant - the film’s occasional lapses are easy to forgive.

Honoré has had something of a shifting identity as a director in the past, working in different modes and voices, but he positions himself here as heir to the aesthetic and attitudes of the French New Wave.

Like many of Honoré’s intimate dramas, Winter Boy is intensely focused on a protagonist struggling to overcome an emotional torpor imposed by tragedy... It’s an empathetic portrait of a youth’s epiphany through heartache, learning anger over mortality cannot sustain one’s pursuits for meaning or pleasure.

[Winter Boy] is arguably [Honoré's] most personal film, and emotionally and stylistically his richest. It features a beautifully affecting central performance from young lead Paul Kircher – for whom this is surely a star-is-born moment – and superb support from Juliette Binoche.

The focus for the most part may be Lucas but Honoré rounds out all his characters, with Binoche getting her chance to deliver the emotional goods as the centre of gravity shifts to her experience towards the film’s end. There’s a melancholy for what has been lost but Honoré is never maudlin and wisely suggests that the bonds between the family will always offer hope.

The intricate plotting of this powerful story becomes the foundation for this stunningly complex and achingly beautiful account of a young man’s journey towards self-acceptance in times of strife, and a memorable lesson in the unpredictable nature of life, with unsettling tragedies providing the opportunity for reflection and conversation.

Despite the gloomy topics, Winter Boy isn’t all doom and gloom. It is Infused with diegetic music, including various characters playing the guitar, singing in italian and in a karaoke... A eclectic soundtrack is a trademark of Honoré, with music often becoming a character per se in his films. All in all, an enjoyable little movie.

None of these threads culminate; rather, the film ascends into near-tragedy and schmaltz. As a portrait of grief that avoids extremes, Winter Boy is tasteful to a fault... To surround [Lucas's] chaos with near-diagnostic maturity is less a useful balance on the part of Honoré, and more a stodgy mischaracterization.

A very moving portrait of a profound disarray, bubbling under the mask of the agitated stubbornness of youth, Winter Boy is a brilliantly constructed film... a film that is more than effective, and very much alive under its airs of funeral ceremony.