the cost of the film's shapeshifting is that it's hard to invest in it as anything other than a movie-making game -- but for Desplechin's impish purposes, it's a price worth paying
it's a wild hodgepodge of genres that often risk collapsing on top of each other. At its best, the movie is a freewheeling gambit, hurtling in multiple directions at once, and it's thrilling to watch Desplechin try juggle them all
a narrative that is not necessarily fully comprehensible as a stand-alone item but which takes great pleasure in playing with all of the writer-director's obsessions, themes and styles
by Peter Bradshaw [The Guardian ]
by Sam C. Mac [Slant Magazine ]
