There are no literal hauntings in Ismael’s Ghosts<\/em>, a wry, lyrical, but often plodding drama from director Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale<\/em>), only metaphorical ones. Freewheeling French filmmaker Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric), who shares Desplechin’s hometown of Roubaix, is in the process of simultaneously shooting and rewriting a new movie when he and his girlfriend, Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg), are visited suddenly by Carlotta (a wide-eyed Marion Cotillard), Ismael’s presumed-dead wife who vanished 21 years ago.<\/p>\n Carlotta’s return causes upheaval, but it’s only one factor in Ismael’s perturbation. It’s apparent that he and the free-spirited Carlotta would have grown apart even if she hadn’t run off (she’s the running-off type). But Sylvia, who’s prudish and insecure on a good day, naturally feels threatened by Carlotta’s presence. Meanwhile, Ismael is struggling to finish his movie, a spy thriller based on the adventures of his own brother (Louis Garrel), who refuses to cooperate; he’s plagued by nightmares; and he remains a friend and confidant to Carlotta’s father, acclaimed director Henri Bloom (Laszlo Szabo), who never got over his daughter’s disappearance.<\/p>\n One senses that this handsomely shot, well-acted film is personal, and familiarity with Desplechin’s previous work might make it more vivid: Amalric played a musician named Ismael Vuillard in Kings and Queen<\/em>, and the spy brother has the same last name as a character (played by Amalric) in two of Desplechin’s other films. Without that context, Ismael’s Ghosts<\/em>,\u00a0a film about absence, feels like it’s missing something, the same way this review is missing a concluding sentence.<\/p>\n There are no literal hauntings in Ismael’s Ghosts, a wry, lyrical, but often plodding drama from director Arnaud Desplechin (A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":9294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Grade: B-<\/span><\/h3>\n
2 hrs., 14 min.; rated R for some nudity and sexuality, brief strong violence; in French with subtitles<\/em><\/h5>\n
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