The Big Picture (2012)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 41
Fresh: 36 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 1,389
My Rating
Movie Info
Paul Exben is a success story -- a great job, a beautiful wife and two wonderful sons. Except that this is not the life he has been dreaming of. A moment of madness is going to change his life, forcing him to assume a new identity that will enable him to live his life fully.
Watch It Now
Cast
-
Romain Duris
Paul Exben -
Marina Foïs
Sarah Exben -
Niels Arestrup
Bartholomé -
Catherine Deneuve
Anne -
Branka Katic
Ivana -
Eric Ruf
Grégoire Kremer -
Enzo Caçote
Hugo Exben -
ADVERTISEMENT
The Big Picture Trailer & Photos
All Critics (41) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (36) | Rotten (5)
Director Eric Lartigau tells the story slowly, less interested in suspense than in character.
Top CriticTakes familiar material - involving a violent crime and an assumed identity - and nudges it just enough to keep us interested for most of the ride.
It moves, with supple muscularity, toward a twisty and satisfying conclusion.
Duris is excellent, his hair and eyes growing wilder with each step of the journey, and he has solid support ...
A dark little fable, the story of two separate roads that briefly intersect - and what happens when a man suddenly jumps from one mapped journey to the other.
The movie has the intense psychological focus of the late Claude Chabrol, if not Chabrol's graceful camerawork.
A decent-enough treat for fans of this particular Gallic genre.
"The Big Picture" ends perhaps a bit too ambiguously, but there's something refreshing about its faith in the moviegoer's intelligence.
...the ambiguity of the French title, L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie ("The man who wanted to live his life"), is a much better fit for the film that the rather bland English title...
Makes full use of Duris' essential "lost" whimsicality.
Director Eric Lartigau, adapting American author Douglas Kennedy's novel, keeps the tension building as Paul tries to leave behind his past and warily assume another person's life.
Are you a fan of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley stories?
A word of advice to anyone who kills his wife's lover, fakes his own death, assumes the dead guy's name, and flees to a seaside Balkan town: leave the camera at home.
Great photography and a vibrant performance by Romain Duris barely keep this lead-footed psycho-drama afloat.
Sprawling crime drama about a high-achieving young Parisian lawyer forced to dump a seemingly picture-perfect life and go on the run is a suspenseful journey with emotional detours.
For most of the way, right up until a hastily contrived and deeply unsatisfying ending, the film perceptively sketches a fractured identity, a man who enters a new life carrying painful remnants of the old.
To call it understated is its own special understatement; this is a film-as-character-study, but one that hovers drone-like over its subject rather than digging in for deep psychological insights.
Audience Reviews for The Big Picture
Super Reviewer
There are at least half a dozen shifts in this wonderfully different film, all of which subtly change the tone of the film without interrupting the flow. Whilst the story occasionally indulges in coincidences for the most part the film feels realistic, and Duris' nuanced study really helps you to believe in him and essentially hope for his 'deliverance'. Stunningly cinematography, almost poetic editing and an open ending combined with spare writing mark The Big Picture out as one of the masterpieces of French cinema. Really worth tracking down.
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
There are no discussion threads for The Big Picture yet.
Latest News on The Big Picture
March 22, 2013:
Digital Multiplex: Zero Dark Thirty and Les MisérablesThis week in streaming, we've got a couple of Oscar winners (Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables), a...
October 12, 2012:
Critics Consensus: Argo Is Certified FreshThis week at the movies, we've got a daring escape (Argo, starring Ben Affleck and Alan Arkin); a...
What's Hot On RT
Bradley Cooper's Best Movies
Fast & Furious 6 is Certified Fresh
Fast & Furious cars gallery
Blockbusters ranked!
Featured on RT
- Critics Consensus: Fast & Furious 6 is Certified Fresh 33
- Red Carpet Photos with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Gina Carano and More 0
- Video: The Hangover Part III Cast Interviews 0
- Total Recall: Bradley Cooper's Best Movies 40
- Parental Guidance: Epic and Beautiful Creatures 2
- Comic Book Movies You Can Watch Online 9
- In Pictures: The Cars of Fast & Furious 0
Top Headlines
-
Evan Peters Joins X-Men: Days of Future Past
0
-
Toby Jones Talks Captain America: The Winter Soldier
1
-
The Poltergeist Reboot May Actually Be a Sequel
10
-
Will Forte Promises MacGruber 2
1
-
Universal Plans Timecop Reboot
2
-
Return of the Jedi Turns 30
1
-
Vin Diesel Says Fast & Furious 7 Will Take Place in L.A.
0
Fresh Links
Featured
Star Trek Movies Ranked
HitFix offers their own take on the worst-to-best of the Enterprise crew's cinematic adventures.
Top 10 Star Trek Villains
Rolling Stone unveils the Enterprise's most irksome adversaries.
Celebrity Yearkbook Flashback
We'll bet you never realized how many stars were cheerleaders and high school athletes!
50 Most Classic Movie Moms
In celebration of Mother's Day, TimeOut offers up 50 iconic matriarchs from the big screen.
Weirdest Movie Siblings
From Twins to The Royal Tenenbaums, Moviefone explores cinema's oddest siblings.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Foreign Titles
- The Big Picture (L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) (DE)
- The Big Picture (L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) (UK)
"The Big Picture" is a well-photographed, engaging and ironic movie about the nature of identity, even with one sizable contrivance. Along these same lines, it took me a while to realize how much a double entendre the title is. From clues scattered throughout the movie, it becomes clear that while Paul and Sarah may have started out at the same place of idealism in their young lives, somewhere along the way, their paths diverged widely, even as Paul tries to maintain his scruffy appearance. Part of that may involve an intervention for Paul, like the one he gives to a teenage client, by people who in feeling they had his best interests at heart, took away some critical part of his personality. So, years later, Sarah has an affair with somebody who reminds her of a younger Paul who Paul in return pretends to be, while also getting a glimpse of a possible future. While doing this in the most selfish way possible, he also learns quite a lot about himself in the process, thus explaining why the movie ends where it does.