Review of Cold Water

Cold Water (1994)
7/10
cold water
8 March 2023
To answer the previous reviewer's question: Yes. Thus the title.

I had the same reaction to this Olivier Assayas study of two disaffected teens as I had to the director's later "Irma Vep", namely that it is a sometimes touching, often tedious film. There is a reason that the great early to mid seventies soundtrack stays in one's consciousness and invites almost universal praise among my ten IMDB colleagues below and that is because it is the only part of the film that is fully alive. Everything else feels slow and drawn out. Scenes tend to last too long and not do enough, like the police interrogation of Christine that takes way too long to establish the fact that she hates her father and that interminable pot/sex party which is where I'm fairly certain I would have pulled the plug were it not for Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper and Janis J. I will, say, however, that the ending is quite powerful. That empty piece of paper says it all. And I do not think I would have been as blown away by this bleak denouement without the fine performance of Virginie Ledoyen as the unhappy, angry Christine. And since Ledoyen was 18 when she did the movie, I guess you have to credit Assayas at least partly for her excellent work. Give it a B minus.
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