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Wild Grass
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 26
  3. Negative: 4 out of 26
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  1. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    Dec 14, 2010
    100
    It's a cocktail-party movie with a Molotov-cocktail finish: a tribute to the 88-year-old auteur's artistry - and his con artistry as well.
  2. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    100
    Alain Resnais's mind-bending new feature.
  3. NPR
    Reviewed by: Mark Jenkins
    90
    Wild Grass is an elegant vessel for outlandish thoughts and troubling impulses. In his rejection of cinematic naturalism, Resnais has made a movie that's both utterly contrived and compellingly lifelike.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    90
    Like its would-be lovers, Wild Grass chases itself in circles as it scrambles genres, examining seeing, thinking, remembering and imagining with a zany awareness. In Georges's words: "After the cinema nothing surprises you. Everything is possible."
  5. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    88
    It is craftsmanship incarnate and the embodiment of tonal unpredictability.
  6. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    88
    Wild Grass is a French movie for people afraid of French movies.
  7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Joe Williams
    88
    Although it alludes to romantic conventions, with overt references to Hollywood history and an overemphatic jazz soundtrack, Wild Grass is neither poignant nor zany. It's an exercise in artifice, not unlike David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" set in the City of Lights. I'm sure the French have a word for it, but je ne sais quoi it is.
  8. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    83
    Wild Grass is itself odd stuff: Sometimes it's as playful as Marguerite's crayon-red corona of frizzy hair, and other times as autumnal as the sight of Georges alone in his study, feeling stuck.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    83
    Whatever it is, Wild Grass is so overtly artificial and aggressively trifling that it's bound to put some viewers off, though it's also so bright and funny that it's hard not to be at least a little enchanted. Resnais' music is so sweet, even when his words are nonsense.
  10. Empire
    Reviewed by: David Parkinson
    80
    A typically poignant lifestory illuminated by strong turns from Dussollier and Azéma, Alain Resnais' latest is one to stir the brain as well as the heart.
  11. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Steve Ramos
    80
    Resnais' storytelling is in top form. Turning 88 this June, he's an inspiration to us all.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: Jordan Mintzer
    80
    The picture is marked by superb performances and a dazzling technical display by the helmer and praiseworthy cinematographer Eric Gautier.
  13. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    75
    The roots of romantic feeling, as explored in Wild Grass, Alain Resnais's jazzy ode to cinema and the love impulse in later life, are equally, spectacularly random.
  14. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    The film is a visual pleasure, using elegant techniques that don't call flashy attention to themselves. The camera is intended to be as omniscient as the narrator, and can occupy the film's space as it pleases and move as it desires. Here is a young man's film made with a lifetime of experience.
  15. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    Wild Grass, which employs a wry, self-deprecating voice-over narrator and some highly stylish camerawork, feels like a comic thriller building into a kind of strange romance.
  16. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Jennie Punter
    75
    With its comic-book hues, crime-caper score, overly serious narrator, interior monologues and surreal touches, Wild Grass proves Resnais is still having fun with cinematic language.
  17. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    Still, when a director of his pedigree and years brings so much life to the screen, inconsistency hardly seems to matter.
  18. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Kerry Lengel
    60
    Wild Grass retains a literary feel with the help of an unseen narrator, who offers intriguing poetic observations. And Resnais' visuals are equally lyrical. What can you say: The French sure know how to make pretty pictures.
  19. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Duane Byrge
    50
    Narratively, Wild Grass is a fractured romance, that never jells on any level, except for the backdrop visuals. Visually scrumptious, as if culled from the pages of good-taste magazines, it has the appeal of a designer catalog, and also the depth.
  20. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    50
    In its refusal to connect the dots, Wild Grass is playful unto tediousness, and between Azéma's overly cutesy performance -- all Harpo Marx hair-frizz and popped eyes -- and Mark Snow's painfully (purposefully?) banal lounge-jazz score, the movie functions as a theoretical irritant rather than a film.
  21. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    50
    Who, exactly, is stalking whom, and for what reason? I'm still not entirely sure, but Resnais' funky, frothy bonbon of a film is nevertheless a breathtaking sight to see.
  22. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    The famously oblique French director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) won a special award at the Cannes film festival for this existential comedy (2009), whose masterful technique fails to compensate for its glassy characters and mercilessly self-amused tone.
  23. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    25
    The worst kind of avant-garde film, one that hides its lack of commitment to the story, the characters and the genre under cover of being experimental. It mocks form and plays with form but offers nothing in its place, just boredom, emptiness and the oldest metaphor in captivity, about grass coming up through concrete.
  24. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    25
    Wild Grass might be the strangest film I've seen all year. Maybe all millennium. Is it any good? Quite frankly, I have no idea.
  25. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    20
    Likely to draw a range of responses. Many will be transported by its gorgeous construction and breathless emotion. Others will find it patently ridiculous.
  26. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    20
    An insufferable exercise in cutie-pie modernism, painfully unfunny and precious to a fault.
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User Reviews

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User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 11 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. SecretAgentGal
    9
    With a surrealist spin on romantic comedy, Alain Resnais' Wild Grass features fully realized characters wrapped up in life's sublime silliness. It's a playful film that tantalizes us as mystery deepens. If Georges Palet (Andre Dussollier) is caught up in imagination, Marguerite (Sabine Azema) is drawn in by empathy for her benevolent stalker, a man in his sixties with memory loss who yearns for some genuine adventure in life. Marguerite, a 50-ish dentist weary of inflicting pain, falls in love with the idea of Georges falling in love with her. It all begins when she has her purse snatched one day by a rollerblader in a Paris shopping mall. Her bright yellow bag floats through the air, fashionable and fanciful. Marguerite's red wallet (which matches her shock of red hair), shows up empty of cash but intact near Georges' car. By the time Georges returns her wallet to the police, he is already enamored with the woman he's never met. After all, she has a pilot's license! The possibilities are endless. Marguerite calls Georges to thank him. When they finally meet, he deadpans, "You love me, then." The fact that Georges is married to a young wife Suzanne (Anne Consigny) is almost irrelevant. As the balance of power shifts and Marguerite pursues Georges, she befriends Suzanne and inserts herself as a friend of the family. With many asides and allusions, Wild Grass is worth seeing twice to savor its complexity. It doesn’t come across as a heavy film though with its flights of imagination, action and color. Wild Grass' characters are loveable, and their adventures treat us to an idealistic palette of "what if." Marguerite returns to her vintage World War II Spitfire after a long absence. Especially charming is a scene where the flight crew arrives to serenade her as she sleeps in the bosom of the **** Finally as Marguerite soars over a patchwork of farmland, Resnais conjures a kooky kaleidoscope aimed at life. Eric Gautier's cinematography is sensual and mind-bending. Wild Grass' ending will upset many, but can be seen as transcendent. Is the unlived life worth living?… Full Review »
  2. DiegoSanRobles
    10
    It’s been a year since I saw Wild Grass and yet it’s as salient as the film’s neon glow in my memory of it. I want to rewatch the film against Mulholland Dr. because the two films might be cinematic cousins. Alain Resnais’s obsession with artificiality is better articulated here than his last two more-theatrical endeavors. His trickery in this film is on a bungee cord, over the top yet restrained.… Full Review »
  3. Fanshawe
    9
    If you're a filmgoer who needs neat, tidy plot lines and a tightly wrapped ending, do not go see this movie. If you're a fan of being provoked and/or incited by a director (think Von Trier or Haneke), you'll love it. It's one long meditation on our expectations as well-trained, Pavlovian, Hollywood-fed viewers. It's fantastic.… Full Review »
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