Father of My Children

The Times“A deep-mining of the Paris bourgeoisie...” The depiction of the grieving producer’s wife and children is agonising in its truth. Louis-Do de Lencquesaing plays the father, and his real-life daughter Alice makes an intelligent, disaffected teenager...

The Independent“So deceptively quiet you could miss the dreadful anguish at its heart...” It becomes moving as much for what it doesn't say as what it does; buried beneath its magnificently composed surface is a poignant sense of self-sacrifice to a business where money will always trump art...

The Telegraph“Cinema’s bravest snapshot of our beleaguered moment...” Hansen-Løve’s film is about coping, its focus practical and utterly unsentimental, its energy somehow both busy and serene. At points where other filmmakers might linger and weep, she bustles ahead into fresh challenges and pastures new...

Little White Lies“An effective drama...” Mia Hansen-Løve effects a successful shift in perspective and traverses a broad emotional canvas. This she does with confidence and sensitivity, and yet her delicately observed drama of loss and renewal is never quite as stirring as it should be...

Empire“Among the most affecting attempts to tackle the credit crunch...” Mia Hansen-Løve maintains focus on the anguish of bereavement, while also celebrating the indomitability of children. Authentic in its depiction of both the filmic and domestic milieux, this is delicate, incisive, touching and trenchant...

Total Film “Graced by moments of quiet beauty and exceptional performances...” Mia Hansen-Love’s film is both a convincing portrait of the punishing realities of funding arthouse cinema and an affecting study of a family attempting to keep going after a personal tragedy...

Sight & Sound“The message couldn’t be clearer: life goes on...” The shots remain short, the editing unfussy; cataclysmic revelations come and go in the blink of an eye; little in the framing or on the soundtrack differentiates particularly between the heartbreaking and the mundane...

Guardian“A far superior film...” Based on the suicide of the film producer Humbert Balsan, it is a deeply thoughtful and intelligent study of a family in crisis. The clarity and maturity of the film was, for me, a marvel - one of the jewels of the Cannes festival...

Time Out film“A sympathetic, very plausible study...” There’s a lightness of touch to Hansen’s handling of tragic, emotional material that falls pleasingly between the scientific and the mawkish...

Variety“Marked by moments of remarkable stillness...” Mirroring the bifurcated structure of All Is Forgiven, Father of My Children consists of a first act that builds gradually but steadily to a shocking moment of violence, followed by a second act that sadly combs through the emotional wreckage...