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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (52) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (18)
This is a film so anxious to be taken seriously that it has evaded seriousness itself.
The movie ends where it might have begun, and merely states mysteries that remain unexplored.
"Bastards" is a thriller truly etched in darkness, pools of black broken mostly by the stricken yet soldiering faces of her main characters, like ships in a sea of stormy nights.
There's nothing wrong with dealing out a dense, noir-like plot in tiny scraps - unless, like "Bastards," the film remains flaccid and tensionless.
Bastards skillfully deploys noir tropes-the alienated hero, the two-timing femme fatale, the ever-widening web of deceit-in the service of a larger political vision.
An oblique, by-design and frustrating drama ...
The film's title Bastards is a suitable epigram for the way that fiscal and sexual depravity have insidiously destroyed every single character in the story.
...an aggressively pretentious art-house disaster generally devoid of redeeming qualities.
What [director Claire Denis'] done, as it happens, is her best film since L'intrus...
In a year where art-house releases and blockbusters were seemingly in competition for the longest running time, Claire Denis' Bastards is an exercise in pure economy.
Like most of Denis's work, Bastards provides no clear conclusions and her characters' behavior remains just as ineffable, endlessly complex, and unknowable as human behavior in real life.
[Denis]'s story shards are so refracted there is no emotional stake to grasp onto
This is an intense psychological drama. The acting is tight as is the unfolding story but forewarnings to those who care not to dwell on disturbing subjects. This will test your limits.
Super Reviewer
With a confusing structure and plot threads that go nowhere fast, this fragmented film noir also fails to keep us involved by never going deep into the characters' motivations, and it leaves loose ends in an artificial resolution that makes it seem incomplete and pointless.
Upon hearing about his brother-in-law and best friend committing suicide and his niece Justine(Lola Creton) being found dazed and naked in the street, Marco Silvestri(Vincent Lindon) leaves his job as a ship captain to rush back to Paris to be there for his sister Sandra(Julie Bataille). A month later, he has moved into a new apartment and insinuated himself into the life of Raphaelle(Chiara Mastroianni), a single mother, who has ties back to Edouard Laporte(Michel Subor), an industrialist who has connections to his own family's business. "Bastards" is a dark moody neo-noir movie. While Claire Denis tells a relatively straightforward story here that also circles back around somewhat unnecessarily to the central incident(I got it once the words "vagina repair" were mentioned, thank you) going from A to Z, she also at the same time leaves out G, H, L, P & T, leaving the viewer to make the necessary connections. Here, they revolve around family, as it almost always does, where perspective can be skewed even under the best circumstances and we get at least two meanings for the film's title. For example, you have to wonder about the Silvestri family business being impossibly high heel shoes and how that perversity might connect to the central tragedy.
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