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Jun 12, 201270Though Demy's approach breaks no new ground, directorially speaking, Martin's personal journey finds a fresh angle on a universal piece of wisdom. Every mother's son believes he's the star of his own life; Americano captures that humbling moment where one realizes perhaps he has only been a bit player in his parents' story, not the star, as initially believed.
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Jun 15, 201263The film's first half has a lovely feel for how bizarre California must seem to foreigners, and there's a piercing sense of the stop-and-start ways that people deal with grief.
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70Though not explicitly autobiographical, this film is deeply personal, and while the nature of cinema is very much on its mind, it rarely feels insular or self-conscious. Instead, it is wistful and nostalgic, and at the same time full of restless curiosity.
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40Scenes of the director as a school-age boy in a Varda film are haunting, but end up simply sparking a desire to see Varda's work.
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50Peel away the many layers of reference, and all that's left of Americano is the raw need of a lonely, confused young man who's distant from his family, awash in vague memories, and struggling to find himself. This is less a movie than a patient for pop psychologists.
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Jun 12, 201260The primary appeal of Americano lies in witnessing the attempt of a famous progeny to forge his own creative path, as Demy's struggle with artistic inheritance resonates throughout unmoored Martin's voyage between past and present.
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40Becomes a clumsy gringo approximation of something else. In this case, it's the old respectable-man-obsessed-with-fallen-angel cliché, which Demy fils tweaks with broad melodramatic strokes and Freudian flotsam, as well as a complete lack of focus or storytelling chops.
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50Americano, which Demy also wrote and stars in, is an ambivalent, occasionally touching work of homage to his parents, yet one whose clumsiness only underscores the superiority of their directly quoted films.