Laissez-passer Reviews
January 23, 2004
Longer than 2 1/2 hours, there's too much to sort out and the confusion becomes annoying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
May 9, 2003
[While The Last Metro] was more melodramatic, confined to a single theater company and its strategies and deceptions, while Tavernier is more concerned with the entire period of history.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
May 8, 2003
No one who loves French film (or movies in general) should miss it.
Original Score: 4/4
March 28, 2003
There's an epic here, but you have to put it together yourself.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
March 21, 2003
Though it runs 163 minutes, Safe Conduct is anything but languorous. It's packed to bursting with incident, and with scores of characters, some fictional, some from history.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
February 6, 2003
You could love Safe Conduct (Laissez Passer) for being a subtitled French movie that is 170 minutes long. You could hate it for the same reason.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
November 5, 2002
Tavernier shows us, in more ways than one, that le cin ma de qualit lives on.
October 23, 2002
Unfolds as one of the most politically audacious films of recent decades from any country, but especially from France.
October 21, 2002
Whatever one makes of its political edge, this is beautiful filmmaking from one of French cinema's master craftsmen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
October 17, 2002
Alternately frustrating and rewarding.
October 17, 2002
Crammed with incident, and bristles with passion and energy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
October 11, 2002
For devotees of French cinema, Safe Conduct is so rich with period minutiae it's like dying and going to celluloid heaven.
Original Score: 4/4
October 11, 2002
Some episodes work, some don't.
Original Score: 2.5/4
October 8, 2002
One of the very best movies ever made about the life of moviemaking.
October 8, 2002
The heat of the moment prevails. It cooks Conduct in a low, smoky and inviting sizzle.
Original Score: 3.5/5
October 7, 2002
Rises and falls on the strength of its individual episodes. Mostly, it rises, though its extreme length ill suits its anecdotal structure (or perhaps vice versa).
Full Review
| Original Score: 61/100
October 5, 2002
At nearly three hours, the whole of Safe Conduct is less than the sum of its parts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
February 13, 2002
It's a clear-eyed portrait of an intensely lived time, filled with nervous energy, moral ambiguity and great uncertainties.