The Father of My Children (Le pere de mes enfants) (2008)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 55
Fresh: 50 | Rotten: 5
A tragedy gracefully lifted by tender empathy and moments of joy, Father of My Children is a quiet triumph for writer-director Mia Hansen-Love.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 1
A tragedy gracefully lifted by tender empathy and moments of joy, Father of My Children is a quiet triumph for writer-director Mia Hansen-Love.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 1,148
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Movie Info
A family is forced to learn a painful lesson about the man of the house in this drama from director Mia Hansen-Løve. Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) is an independent film producer who runs a well-respected production company, Moon Films. For Grégoire, to work is to live, and while he loves his wife, Sylvia (Chiara Caselli), and their three daughters, Clemence (Alice de Lencquesaing), Valentine (Alice Gautier), and Billie (Manelle Driss), during the week he's practically a stranger to
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Cast
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Louis-Dominique de Lencqu...
Grégoire, Grégoire Ca... -
Chiara Caselli
Sylvia, Sylvia Canvel -
Alice de Lencquesaing
Clémence, Clémence Ca... -
Alice Gautier
Valentine, Valentine Ca... -
Manelle Driss
Billie, Billie Canvel -
Eric Elmosnino
Serge -
Sandrine Dumas
Valérie, Valérie, Val?... -
Dominique Frot
Bérénice, Bérénice, B... -
Jamshed Usmonov
Kova Asimov -
Igor Hansen-Love
Arthur Malkavian -
Magne Havard Brekke
Stig Janson -
Eric Plouvier
Attorney -
Michael Abiteboul
The Banker -
Philippe Paimblanc
Assistant Director of L... -
André Marcon
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All Critics (56) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (50) | Rotten (5) | DVD (2)
The film is achieved with a rare tenderness and grace by 29-year-old French actress-filmmaker Mia Hanson-Love.
Top CriticWhile the movie is far from perfect, those potential missteps are, in the end, part of what makes The Father of My Children so beautiful.
A modest drama about a suicide and its aftermath that never quite moves an audience as it should.
A subtle work on an exceedingly difficult subject.
The Father of My Children is exceptional drama. Compelling and unforced, it shows sensitivity and evenhandedness in approaching a difficult subject.
It is a film about children and their parents, and not knowing where fate, or life, can take you.
Draws one in both empathetically and suspensefully.
A heartbreaking fable about life, legacy and the way men define themselves through their work.
It's quiet, unshowy and devastating.
It's a very intelligent film this, and one I think which is not just revealing about film-making but has insights into the dilemmas of many others who see the businesses -- or indeed family farms -- they have built up over a lifetime going under.
There's a lot of intelligence and humanity in the script and it follows its own path. [Hansen-Løve's] direction shows rare confidence and poise, a willingness to build characters slowly, with a natural flow of time.
French drama Father of My Children addresses an extremely confronting subject with both an unblinking gaze and an open mind.
Inception celebrates the manufactured reality, Father of My Children the true one.
What makes it a wonderful film is that for those of us inside this crazy dream factory, and we're only on the edges, it depicts the relentless nature of the beast, the roller-coaster ride, the unstoppable nature of a film in production.
The subtle, tender sadness of the film trumps any of its small scripting problems and certainly marks out not only the film's young cast members but also the director as ones to watch.
Mia Hansen-Løve deserves credit both as a writer and a director. This is a very convincing drama.
Fresh-faced performances and tender writing makes for a family who jumps straight off the screen and into your heart.
This delicate and beautiful film about the highs and lows of a close-knit family takes us on an emotional journey in which we experience joy, laughter, sorrow and contemplation.
A film that portrays a subject that could easily have become cloying with an austere, penetrating eye.
Audience Reviews for The Father of My Children (Le pere de mes enfants)
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Foreign Titles
- Der Vater meiner Kinder (DE)
- Le père de mes enfants (FR)
An hour into this film, there's an event which defines all that came before and comes after. But since the Flixster synopsis doesn't give it away (even though the Netflix synopsis does), I won't reveal it here. What I can say is that the film is thoroughly uninteresting for the first hour, but afterward it finds its focus and comes to a fairly satisfactory resolution. The film seems to be saying that any attempts we make in order to find meaning and existential security in our professional lives are not as satisfying as what we ignore in our personal lives.
Overall, Father of My Children is poorly constructed and not well paced (the event an hour into it should have begun the film), but I ended up respecting it even if I couldn't like it.