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35 Shots of Rum

EMAILPRINTCinema Guild

35 Shots of Rum reviews
92
6.1 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Claire Denis
Jean-Pol Fargeau

Directed by: Claire Denis

Release Date:
Theatrical: September 16, 2009

Running Time: 100 minutes, Color

Origin: France | Germany

Language(s): French | German

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Gregoire Colin, Ingrid Caven, Mati Diop, and Nicole Dogue

A widowed conductor, looking forward to retirement, lives with his grown daughter in a Paris suburb. When a neighbor starts to show interest in his "little girl", the conductor tries to adjust.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young

Claire Denis, not always an easy director, is in top form here directing an almost all-black cast with grace and delicacy. For the happy few, this is French art house cinema at its unpretentious best.

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100

The New York Times A.O. Scott

In its modest scope and mellow tone, 35 Shots of Rum resembles Olivier Assayas’s "Summer Hours," another recent film by a French director who has sometimes trafficked in provocation and extremity. Both movies embed extraordinary thematic richness within a simple, almost anecdotal narrative framework, and both achieve a rare eloquence about the state of the world by means of tact and reticence.

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100

Time Out New York David Fear

To fall in love with it, viewers only have to be receptive to a movie that examines the ties that bind with grace, wit and depth.

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100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The film evolves into a simple, intimate, acutely emotional portrait of a family reaching a painful crossroads.

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100

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

For 20 years, Claire Denis has been among France's foremost filmmakers with her acute yet subtle observations of the ebbs and flows within relationships. Her perception and understanding seem to grow only richer over the years, and her newest film, 35 Shots of Rum, is surely one of her finest -- and thereby one of the best films of the year.

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100

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

35 Shots of Rum is visual poetry, but poetry that examines the human condition with insight and illumination.

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100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

You can live in a movie like this.

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90

Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen

It's a beautiful picture but very quietly so, and definitely not for the ADHD set.

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90

Village Voice Melissa Anderson

35 Shots is Denis's warmest, most radiant work, honoring a family of two's extreme closeness while suggesting its potential for suffocation.

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90

Variety Jay Weissberg

Claire Denis’ latest may appear whisper-thin on the surface, yet it’s marvelously profound, illuminating the love between a father and daughter but also highlighting the difficulty of relinquishing what most people spend a lifetime putting into place.

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88

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Denis -- who has called the film a tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu -- keeps dialogue to a minimum as she delicately examines how immigration is changing the face of France.

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88

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

I liked these characters, and suddenly not having them in my life anymore, simply because Denis has decided to start the closing credits, devastated me.

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80

Empire David Parkinson

Superbly played and realised, this stays with you.

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80

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

There is never a shortage of options if you're looking for an intimate foreign drama about family bonds. But the eloquent insights of director Claire Denis stand alone.

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75

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The French actor Alex Descas is mesmerizing in 35 Shots of Rum, where he plays a metro conductor.

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50

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

Hushed minimalism is a rare and appealing quality in the cinema these days, but so little happens in 35 Shots of Rum that I'm hard-pressed to describe the plot. It doesn't exactly have one.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.1 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

N K gave it a5:
Beautifully filmed, strong main characters and one particular scene (in the bar) that might be one of the best scenes in 2009. Still, it is excruciatingly boring. 1h30 that look like three hours. nothing truly happens. one ridiculously silly scene (in germany - completely and utterly unnecessary to the plot) most absurd, anti-climatic movie ending in quite a long time.

Tom G gave it a5:
Overrated: a highly stylized and almost prim vision of Black Paris. The people, like the apartments, are unconvincingly grand and silent amidst their working class neighborhoods and jobs. The coincidences that lend pathos to the story are forced. Claire Denis overreaches here and doesn't bring it off--though there's no denying that the critics have loved it.

Pyr H gave it a5:
Lovely scenes of working class Paris, though the living spaces seem much too bourgeois 'intello' with books everywhere for the train workers depicted. The nearly all Black cast is excellent and worth watching whatever they say or do. But this film suffers from Claire Denis' pretentious, mannered take on the emotional lives of its subjects: there is much too much silence--too much quiet--in their lives and the highly symbolic coincidences are unconvincing. Is it a white intellectual's overly reverent appreciation of Black Paris that's at fault? Or is it that Denis tells every story with a formality and 'respect' that leaves out the noise and stir of real life--and real feelings. Perhaps both. In any case, this is a classic of the succès de critique. The critics love it for its demure, understated silences.

Charles S. gave it a10:
Saw this at a festival...its a beautiful, simple film. True gem and very moving. That bar scene is one of the best scenes in cinema.

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