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The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

The Imperialists Are Still Alive! (2011)

tomatometer

67

Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 2

No consensus yet.

audience

72

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 250

My Rating

Movie Info

A successful visual artist working in post-9/11 Manhattan, Asya (Elodie Bouchez) lives the life of the hip and glamorous, replete with exclusive art parties, supermodels, and stretch limousines while she carefully follows the situation in the Middle East on television. Asya learns that her childhood friend, Faisal, has disappeared-the victim of a purported CIA abduction. That same night, she meets Javier (Jose Maria de Tavira), a sexy Mexican PhD student, and romance blossoms. Javier finds

Unrated,

Art House & International, Drama

$2.8k

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Critic Reviews for The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

All Critics (12) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (10) | Rotten (2)

Nothing is resolved in the film, but Bouchez and De Tavira are exceptionally paired, and attuned to Durra's easygoing intellectual eros shorn of dramatics.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Variety
Robert Koehler
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is an admirable film in many ways as its young writer-director, Zeina Durra, explores a subculture right before our eyes that remains mostly unseen.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Too concerned with being cool to work up much in the way of political outrage, much less narrative drive.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: New York Post
Lou Lumenick
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A multicultural vision of urbanity coalesces that is very different from that of a typical movie of impoverished immigrants trying to assimilate in an outer borough.

April 14, 2011 Full Review Source: New York Times
Stephen Holden
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Occasionally, Durra loses her nerve and spells out her intentions, but she's at her best when both her commentary and her comedy are nearly imperceptible.

April 12, 2011 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Karina Longworth
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The filmmaker reserves her very gentle satire for the blithe, class-based assumptions of wealthy Middle Eastern expatriates and the macho traditions of their poorer fellow-émigrés.

April 11, 2011 Full Review Source: New Yorker
Richard Brody
New Yorker
Top Critic IconTop Critic

But for all it's faults in title, plotting and editing, The Imperialists Are Still Alive! contains the promise of a distinct female voice in independent cinema.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: New York Press
Leslie Stonebraker
New York Press

With The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, writer-director Zeina Durra has made a quirkily appealing film which intriguingly manages to feel both slight and authentically weighty at the same time.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Film Journal International
David Noh
Film Journal International

If it accomplishes one thing, it is that Durra shows herself to be an exciting young director. She has a sense of style and a sense of character. And her film has a lot of character because of it.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Film School Rejects
Neil Miller
Film School Rejects

The first-time director's refreshingly credible portrait of a boho character with Middle Eastern origins rectifies the aforementioned canonical gap in a witty, naturalistic generational snapshot.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: indieWIRE
Eric Kohn
indieWIRE

A New York artist of Middle Eastern background tries to mesh resistance and romance in Zeina Durra's '70s-textured seriocomic debut.

April 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Bill Weber
Slant Magazine

The film is ultimately more interesting than engaging; Durra doesn't yet have a grasp of the simultaneous warmth and needle-sharp satirical sense that infuse Stillman's films.

April 14, 2011 Full Review Source: AV Club
Alison Willmore
AV Club
View all critic reviews (12)

Audience Reviews for The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

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Another art film I was able to see at the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque. I knew nothing about it beforehand besides the blurb printed in the Cinematheque's calendar, which said it was inspired by the films of Whit Stillman. And that didn't help me out because I am not familiar with his films. Anyways, I gave it a shot and found it funny at times. Usually funny in the way that reality shows are funny because it is awkward watching spoiled self-important types show off how spoiled and self-important they are. There is a heart buried under the story of these glamorous hipster types though too. Elodie Bouchez as Asya is an artist born in France whose parents are of Middle Eastern decent. She learns that an ex-boyfriend was possibly abducted or at least has been prevented from leaving the Middle East when a military coup occurs. In a post-9/11 world the CIA suspects nearly everyone of Middle Eastern decent of potential terrorism. The ex-boyfriend's brother Karim still lives near Asya in Manhattan and is protective toward her. Asya's friend Tatiana was engaged to marry the ex-boyfriend very soon. Will he survive? Will he make it home to America? While all this is worrying Asya she goes about her life. After an art show including some of her work, she meets Javier, played by Jose Maria de Tavira, a Mexican law student. As they become closer, their circle of friends (and humorously whoever else wants to latch on to their young ritzy life) continue to go clubbing where there is always one friend too drunk to get home or to the next bar alone. The chemistry between Elodie and Jose is strong as their relationship develops. They laugh when they go on a date to a dance recital, just the two of them, because the dance is impossibly pretentious, but they seem unaware that their lifestyle is often just as pretentious. The pace and story challenge expectations in a good way, but I didn't always find it very meaningful.
October 16, 2011
hypathio7
Byron Brubaker

Super Reviewer

With both hilarious satire and gentle emotional authenticity, the filmmaker, Zeina Durra, really gets the texture of young upper-class expats living in New York. She shows, on one hand, the freedom quite particular to New York City, where nationalities mix, where classes confront each other in much more ambiguous circumstances than wherever back home is, and where everyone you know is engaged is some sort of vague, self-obsessed pursuit of accomplishment --all amidst endless taxi and limo rides to the next coolest place, where you only ever stay for five minutes. On the other hand, the movie captures the way that , when you come to America, you feel as if you're in a place where the wars, the struggles, the serious business of other places, somehow get sucked into a bubble that you can look at, but not touch. Durra does an admirable job of gathering these stray pieces together to show the strange, restless state in which her characters live.

The critics speak about the influence on Durra's work from Whit Stillman's films--which I love, and which always make me laugh out loud. She certainly has learned from his marvelous ability to capture social nuances and the characteristics of class and nationality, and to satirize them with an utterly straight face. The difference, I think, is that Stillman always remains slightly aloof, maybe even slightly aghast at his characters (or am I just projecting?), where Durra approaches them here with more compassion. She eventually lets you see the substance behind characters that start out as utterly frivolous.

I'll certainly be looking for Durra's next film.
September 28, 2012
Sharon K.
Sharon Kahn

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