It’s raw and funny and angry and loving, with rich and complex characters and relationships ...

| Apr 26, 2025

The film, like Ismael, cannot escape its own self-indulgent tendencies, leading to an experience that never coalesces into something that feels all that insightful, despite some fine acting and moments of wit and mystery.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 30, 2020

Ismael's Ghosts is several movies each with their own merits, but that doesn't mean that they coexist amicably.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 23, 2020

Deliciously self-reflexive and touching, Ismael's Ghosts is another great testament of Desplechin's unique talent as a film enthusiast and a great writer.

| Jul 17, 2020

Unfortunately all the metafictional layering only highlights the lack of engagement at the center of the story, the three stars acting up a storm but barely acknowledging each other.

| Apr 17, 2020

EVERYONE is very good in the movie they find themselves in... there are just so many damned movies crammed into Ismael's Ghosts.

| Mar 20, 2020

In spite of its admirable storytelling ambition and the obvious craftsmanship at play, Ismael's Ghosts does feel schizophrenically busy at times and proves ultimately unsatisfying as it fails to drive home the many questions it successfully raises.

| Oct 12, 2019

Both he (Ismael) and the film deteriorate in front of our eyes in spectacular fashion, the hand that holds the threads begins to feel less steady as the filmmaker loses his grip on what is reality and what is fiction.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2019

[Director Arnaud] Desplechin seeks - and finds - for each precise action and each concrete scene its own cinematographic response. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 7, 2019

Cotillard and Gainsbourg sustain the film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2018

Despite being an enjoyable ride-- with fine acting all around-- ISMAEL'S GHOSTS is too overstuffed to cohere, and its shifting time line gets tiresome.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 4, 2018

Desplechin imprints an athletic agility to such a potentially dense proposal, offering a masterful lesson in control. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Dec 3, 2018

Enchanting moments are scattered throughout, but Ismael's Ghosts feels chaotic and uneven.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 20, 2018

Desplechin has concocted his own particular brand of listless art-house navel gazing, and Ismael's Ghosts are neither haunting nor notable apparitions.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 27, 2018

Desplechin intercuts between two stories and varied places (France, Tajikistan, Prague) brutally and almost haphazardly as each lurches along an unsatisfying trajectory. Lines are blurred and nothing rings true.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2018

Confusing French drama has shocking violence, nudity.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 10, 2018

Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg momentarily bring verve to proceedings.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 9, 2018

Decked out in the classy colours of the high-end French art film, Ismael's Ghosts is probably easier to enjoy if you make no attempt to fit its disjointed units together.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 8, 2018

...did its protagonist's increasing bewilderment really have to be paralleled by such extremes of disjointedness and pseudiness in the film itself?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 4, 2018

With no discernible axis on which to see things turn and a refusal to ground the narrative in a place where characters behave slightly recognisably to the real world, there is nothing to hold on to throughout this preposterous, contrived outing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 4, 2018