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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Poison Friends

EMAILPRINTStrand Releasing

Poison Friends reviews
75
9.0 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 14 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 1 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Foreign

Written by: Emmanuel Bourdieu
Marcia Romano

Directed by: Emmanuel Bourdieu

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 27, 2007

Running Time: 100 minutes, Color

Origin: France

Language(s): French (with English subtitles)

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Malik Zidi, Thibault Vinçon, Alexandre Steiger, Thomas Blanchard, Dominique Blanc, Natacha Régnier, and Jacques Bonnaffé

At the start of the new college semester, Eloi and Alexandre encounter André, the most brilliant student in the lecture hall. Fascinated by his ease and charisma, they quickly fall under his spell. André then offers them his friendship in exchange for complete loyalty to him. Lost in admiration, Eloi and Alexandre devotedly submit to this rigorous discipline – up until the day that André abandons them. Eloi and Alexandre now have no other choice than to stand on their own. (Strand Releasing)

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...

91

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

While the young people chatter about life and literature with sometimes overbearing self-satisfaction, the astute filmmaker observes their pretentious gum-flapping with a mixture of amusement, compassion, and wised-up rue.

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90

Variety Lisa Nesselson

A movie so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now.

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80

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Not for nothing did this movie open the International Critics' Week (and win its grand prize) last year at Cannes; Poison Friends may be all talk, but it's cut like an action flick.

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80

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, Poison Friends is gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema.

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80

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Bourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor.

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75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.

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75

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's intellectual without being dry, dramatic without bombast, smart without posturing. Its characters and milieu are very well drawn, and Andre is one of the more intriguing and convincing fictional creations in recent film.

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75

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Four university students band together under the obnoxious mentorship of Andre (Thibault Vinçon), who is meant to be brilliant but, to me at least, seemed all too obviously a poseur. His betrayal of his friends deepens the movie.

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75

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This sly, subtle and very French psychological drama dissects the relationship between three insecure Sorbonne students and their deeply flawed idol.

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75

New York Post Kyle Smith

Poison Friends deftly sketches the fine line - is there one? - between "critic" and "loser."

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75

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If, unlike his friends, you don't take anything Andre says seriously, there is a wicked sense of fun about it, and you may even see a little of yourself in one of the characters.

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70

The New York Times A.O. Scott

As a group portrait of apprentice intellectuals the film has an almost documentary accuracy. It also has a degree of energy, an appetite for strong feelings and big ideas, notably missing in American movies about the young and overeducated, which tend to specialize in mumbled ironies and tiny epiphanies.

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70

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A biting academic fable about the importance of aggression over intellect.

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60

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

It is kept listenable--and watchable--because Bourdieu uses his knowledge of these people with winning ease. The story's conclusion verges on the grim, and it underscores Bourdieu's presumable theme: student life and talk are the last real vacations in many lives.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes

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

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