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Jan 25, 201291Sprinting through hospital rooms, parties, sterile corridors, and grayish courtyards, Declaration Of War salutes its characters' capacity to step up and meet life's harshest unexpected demands.
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90In the case of French actress and director Valérie Donzelli's striking and imaginative film Declaration of War, the autobiographical element is so strong that the movie's virtually a docudrama – but a dazzlingly strange docudrama with musical numbers, choreographed interludes and prodigious cinematic verve.
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88The tonal shifts, the "Amelie"-style voiceover and the punk-retro soundtrack may jar some viewers who expect uninterrupted violins, but Declaration of War is alternative therapy that really works.
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88Valérie Donzelli's Declaration of War deals with issues that may scare audiences away. Don't let it.
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80Instead of venturing into mournful "Terms of Endearment" territory, the film - and the filmmakers - commit to a relentless determination to live.
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80For all its quirks and tangents, Declaration of War feels entirely alive. This story of two people who transform fear into action is inspiring.
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80Parenting relies on stamina as much as compassion, and Donzelli has, against all odds, crafted a genuinely moving ode to both the tenacity of filial love under extreme circumstances and the toll it extracts. Consider this a coup.
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Jan 24, 201280Shot in the actual hospital where Donzelli and Elkaïm's actual son was treated for cancer, Declaration of War turns autobiography into thrilling expressionist art.
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75You can sense the deep investment Donzelli and Elkaïm have in what they're doing, which isn't something you get at the movies every day.
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75Declaration of War is a domestic comedy as much as it is a medical drama. This movie has been made by the couple it is about, Valerie Donzelli and Jeremie Elkaim. She directed, they wrote it together, and in real life, their relationship also fell apart. They approach their fraught story with a surprising freshness.
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75France's Declaration of War has it all: comedy, romance, fantasy, musical interludes and a child with a brain tumor. Wait - what?
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75What a treat to find a movie so bright-eyed and true - without a trace of bathos - in its depiction of such a harrowing subject.
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75An adventurous song selection and stylish narrative techniques put a strangely romantic face on a harrowing story that's a parental nightmare.
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70Declaration of War is about being under siege from illness, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. This modern-day Juliette and Romeo find their own tragedy, but are not poisoned by it.
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65Though it's certainly moving, it suffers from a frantically overproduced desperation to hold what the filmmakers seem to fear will be our wavering attention.
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65Between the Truffautish voice-overs and Jacques Demy-style musical interludes, it's a wonder anyone in this sort-of drama, sort-of comedy ever gets any rest.
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63Although they are no longer together and are living their own separate personal lives, their story, fictionalized but still autobiographical, bonded them for life. Apparently, they are best friends whose dedicated collaboration was the only way they could tell this harrowing story. It's a brave effort any way you slice it.
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63The surest sign that a filmmaker recognizes the insularity of his or her project is the presence of perfunctory attempts to hint at a wider political context.
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60Donzelli, a busy actress in France, directed this drama from a script she wrote with Elkaim, which may explain why the parents become the center of the movie while the ostensibly suffering boy never takes shape as a character.
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60This isn't a therapy session on film; it's a visually stark, lively, organically engrossing movie with a very real handle on the mental processes, and interpersonal demands, that come with issues of life and death.
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50As ponderous and overwrought as a film hogged by a couple of young hipsters named Roméo and Juliette can be.