Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love. Directed by Gus Van Sant, one of the most astute observers of people living life on the edge, comes a take on friendship and young love as engaging and true as it is provocative and stirring.
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Robbie Collin
“The palate is crisp and autumnal, none of the emotional beats are played straight, the performances are sweet.”
20/10/2011
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Total Film
James Mottram
“It all adds up to an ultra-quirky, rambling meditation on life, the afterlife and that painful bit in between.”
20/10/2011
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The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“Van Sant directs with as much human sympathy as he can muster. But the whole is fairly anodyne stuff, despite sincere performances from Wasikowska and Hopper.”
21/10/2011
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The New York Times
A. O. Scott
“It is hard to say ... if this film, directed by Gus Van Sant from a script by Jason Lew, is an argument for denial or a treatise on acceptance. Curiously, and in a way that is sometimes touching and sometimes icky, it does not seem to perceive much of a difference. ”
15/09/2011
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The Los Angeles Times
Sheri Linden
“The insistently quirky details don't disguise the fact that the drama grows ever more predictable and precious, complete with falling-in-love montage. Screenwriter Jason Lew's character insights take the form of the obvious.”
16/09/2011
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Empire Magazine
Damon Wise
“...a pasty homage to Hal Ashby’s 1971 black comedy Harold And Maude.”
17/10/2011
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The Observer
Philip French
“Listless might have been a better title. ”
23/10/2011
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
“Sad to say, ‘Restless’ is an almighty dud.”
20/10/2011
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“Ultimately the film has more fashion sense than common sense. The plot is an incestuous blend of Harold and Maude and Love Story; the main symptom of the terminal disease from which Wasikowska’s character suffers seems to be a tendency to faint while wearing wacky hats. ”
21/10/2011
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The Sunday Times
Helen Hawkins
“The film mostly manages to walk the line between tender and terminally kooky, but Hopper, sadly, doesn’t engage our sympathies. Go to watch Wasikowska, though, with her magnetically charged pallor: she is proving one of the best young actors in the business.”
23/10/2011
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
“The film ends up succumbing to that specious movie convention that treats terminal cancer as a sort of serenity-enhancing condition that causes sufferers to become adorably eccentric and angelically beatific as they near the end. ”
21/10/2011
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The Financial Times
Antonia Quirke
“A minor film from director Gus Van Sant, whose crafty humour and existentialism boils down to what feels like kookiness here. ”
20/10/2011
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“The sheer fatuity of the film's representation of bereavement and death is breathtaking, and even given that it is, arguably, supposed to be a semi-fantastical riff, there is something so insufferably smug about the whole proceedings. ”
20/10/2011
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The Independent
Antony Quin
“Whenever the hopeless script dries up, which is quite often, Van Sant grouts the gaps with the wimpiest indie music known to man.”
21/10/2011
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