Café de Flore Reviews
Paste Magazine
As abstract as the film is in theory, it is brought together with the conclusiveness of finishing a puzzle with no missing pieces.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8.8/10
StaciWilson.com
Affectionate, sexy, thought-provoking, devastating, beautiful, bittersweet, life-affirming... Cafe de Flore is all that, and more. See it, listen to it, believe it.
Spirituality and Practice
A moving drama about how love is refined through troubles in the lives of a devoted mother in 1969 Paris and a middle-aged man in 2011 Montreal.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Flicks.co.nz
A well-acted, visually arresting and artfully structured romantic endeavour.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Birmingham Post
Think of a fusion of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Crash, The Lovely Bones and The Tree of Life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Radio Times
Haunting and heartbreaking, director Jean-Marc Vallée's romantic drama is an electrifying multilayered experience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Daily Express
A challenging, heartfelt but often confusing drama that seesaws between the Paris of 1969 and contemporary Montreal.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
MovieScope
As these parallel narratives unfold, separated by time and space but conjoined by their shared motifs of love, loss, jealousy and obsession, hints emerge of other, less strictly thematic connections between them.
ViewLondon
This is a superbly acted drama that packs a powerfully emotional punch, though a late-blooming plot development ultimately stretches credulity and threatens to undo the film's dramatic impact.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top CriticWhatever its flaws, in the moment this is one to set the film-lover's pulse racing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
What Culture
Drama so perfectly wrought is hard to come by. Vallée and his stellar cast have carved out a challenging, emotionally rich film which is not shaken easily.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Matt's Movie Reviews
It's themes of spirituality, religion and love eternal in an increasingly secular and jaded world is wonderfully presented and touching in its tangibility, although it often ventures into brazen territory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
2UE That Movie Show
Café De Flore is a tragic, beautiful tale of love remixed through time; where the chords resonate true in every remixed incarnation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Screen-Space
It is a beautiful, accessible work of romantic film artistry.
The Vine
Vallee tells the stories in an impressionistic way; Antoine's side of things occasionally verges on Tree of Life territory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
sbs.com.au
Playful, painful, willfully strange, deeply emotional and deliberately, delightfully obscure at times, Café de Flore, from French-Canadian writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.), is a puzzle-film par excellence.
At the Movies (Australia)
There's something quite haunting about the film, and perhaps more than one viewing is required to sort it all out.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Herald Sun (Australia)
Cafe de Flore lays out an open-ended obstacle course for heart and mind. Stay the distance and so much will stay with you for some time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
FILMINK (Australia)
More than the sum of its terrific parts, this beautifully crafted tale about the pain of love deftly reconciles two disparate stories - with stellar results.
The Sunday Age
Vanessa Paradis is superb, playing the tough, single mother struggling in a prejudiced and very un-swinging '60s Paris as if her life depended on it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
