Restless (2011)
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Reviews Counted: 106
Fresh: 39 | Rotten: 67
Mia Wasikowska puts in a nuanced performance but nobody else, actors and directors included, are capable of finding a compelling angle beneath the twee veneer.
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 21
Mia Wasikowska puts in a nuanced performance but nobody else, actors and directors included, are capable of finding a compelling angle beneath the twee veneer.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 5,788
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Movie Info
Annabel Cotton (Mia Wasikowska) is a beautiful and charming terminal cancer patient with a deep felt love of life and the natural world. Enoch Brae (Henry Hopper) is a young man who has dropped out of the business of living, after an accident claimed the life of his parents. When these two outsiders chance to meet at a funeral, they find an unexpected common ground in their unique experiences of the world. For Enoch, it includes his best friend Hiroshi (Ryo Kase) who happens to be the ghost of a
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Cast
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Henry Hopper
Enoch, Enoch Brae -
Mia Wasikowska
Annabel -
Ryo Kase
Hiroshi -
Schuyler Fisk
Elizabeth -
Jane Adams (II)
Mabel -
Lusia Strus
Rachel -
Chin Han
Dr. Lee
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Restless Trailer & Photos
All Critics (107) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (67) | DVD (1)
All surface, no thought and quite horribly empty.
Top CriticRestless is consciously lovely in the face of death. How rare.
This low-budget movie takes its time filling in the backgrounds of its characters. That works for a while, but when it's over you may wonder if that's all there is.
Gus Van Sant doesn't make bad movies.
Van Sant lays on the whimsy with a trowel; Wasikowska's quirky thrift-store wardrobe and twinkling performance are enough to trigger migraines.
If anyone other than Gus Van Sant had directed Restless, the film could have well been impossible to sit through.
Better stock up on tissues.
Quirky, death-obsessed...oddly touching...faintly amusing
A slight tale whose self-conscious indie quirks fail to lift it beyond familiar Disease of the Week formula.
The couple's ability to see through how people perceive courageous behavior in the face of death forms the heart of the film. Van Sant illustrates that those trappings usually exist only to make the ones who are not sick feel better about themselves.
Had Restless been a silent film it may have been some kind of stylish masterpiece.
Gus Van Sant staggers back and forth across that line like a drunk with a busted stopwatch.
Driven by the brave performances of its two young leads, this tender and emotionally resonant film thoughtfully challenges our ideas surrounding death.
A tenderly stylistic evocation of young love wrapped inside a New Wave-esque bundle of wistfulness and nervous energy, and a well constructed little diorama. But one whose elicited feelings do not, alas, linger.
Gus Van Sant's film bristles with an ethereal quality as we are drawn into a reality in which time seems to be suspended. First time screenwriter Jason Lew has penned a poignant and heartfelt story
With a tighter grip on proceedings, one imagines Restless would have Van Sant troubling the Academy all over again. As it stands, it's a sweet, gentle film.
Restless shares with some of Van Sant's best work its gritty Portland, Ore., locations and a washed out palette. Unfortunately, that's all it shares with it.
anepityxhs apodosh mias realistikhs isorropias anamesa sto penthimo, alla taytoxrona elpidoforo paron
[S]cramble[s] to cram the 'quirky' back into the please-god-kill-me-and-save-me-from-yet-another-ridiculous-teen-romance... I'm really sick of stories in which women are sacrificed to men's personal journeys.
"Listless" might have been a better title...
With Restless, Van Sant seems to be aiming for somewhere in between the art house and the cineplex by delivering a movie that is as heartwarming as it is strange.
The downward curve of Gus Van Sant's career continues with this awful slice of morbid whimsy.
If you haven't seen a wasting disease in real life, you might think "Restless" is romantic. If you have, you might diagnose it as terminally cute.
Hopper is the spitting image of his father Dennis when he was 20 and the versatile Wasikowska once again shows her talent for investing the most delicate of material with a sturdy emotional conviction.
It's not for everyone, but for me, it works.
Audience Reviews for Restless
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Hiroshi: I see now that death is easy. It is love that is hard.
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- Annabel: People haven't been around even a fraction of the time of some reptiles, so three months is almost the same as three centuries or three days...
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- Hiroshi: White people. You have to grab everything.
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- Enoch: We have so little time to say the things we mean.
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- Hiroshi: You have no respect for the dead.
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- Enoch Brae: We have so little time to say the things we mean.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Comparisons to Harold and Maude | 5 months ago | 0 |
| AO Scott / NYT | 6 months ago | 1 |
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This is the story of a quirky romance, as shown through the lens of the talented and versatile Gus Van Sant. Enoch is a sullen and troubled lad whose 'hobby' as it were, is to crash funerals, whether he knows the deceased or not. He also spends a lot of time with Hiroshi- the ghost of a Kamikaze pilot who may or may not be just a figment of Enoch's imagination.
At one of his many funeral crashings, Enoch has a meet cute with Annabel- a young woman ho loves nature, and like Enoch, spending time among the dead. Thinking she just works at a ward for 'kids with cancer', he comes to find out that she is instead a patient, suffering with a terminal brain tumor. Knowing she doesn't have much time, the two try to make the most of their blossoming relationship, with her getting some much needed understanding, and him learning that life doesn't have to be a gloomy as he thinks it is.
This is a very sweet and poignant film. Thankfully, it rarely gets too sappy and schmaltzy. Even the quirkier elements like Hiroshi, are handled in a fairly realistic manner, despite how unrealistic it might seem. The film is also pretty solid with the characters and story, though there are a few plot points that don't really go anywhere and could have been handled better (namely the Halloween bully confrontation).
Danny Elfman provides a solid, atypical (for him) score, Van Sant provides some good direction, and the lead performances by Henry (son of Dennis) Hopper and Mia Wasikowska are great. Ryo Kase is also quite good as Hiroshi, and even though it is odd, I like the idea of Enoch being friends with a Kamikaze pilot.
Give this one a shot. It's a nice, well done indie film, and makes for a great date night watch.