Glory on the decline, Martha Duval (Isabelle Adjani) spends anything but peaceful days in her Moorish villa on the Côte d'Azur.
It's a beautiful place to wait for the end of the world.
To make this stay sweeter, the diva has hired the services of a gigolo, a former dancer who now considers himself a writer (Pierre Niney).
No one is fooled, neither him nor her, and of course, none of their friends.
We pretend.
Between praise and murderous criticism, Nicolas Bedos' fourth feature film,
Masquerade,
divides critics.
“A clever suspense around excellent performers”
, estimates
20 minutes
.
Remarks corroborated by
Le Point
, which considers the film
"funny, lively, cruel, absolutely cynical and endowed with a cast at the top"
or
Le Monde
which sees in it
"a tasty lesson in sentimental fraud".
The weekly
Marianne
evokes a film "
in which the obvious pleasure that Nicolas Bedos has in directing, in filming these actors, this light, these shots rather than others, is transmitted to those who follow this story of fraud, passionate love, small pettiness and great destruction
”
.
Nicolas Bedos
“has the virtuosity, the tinsel of a Sorrentino”
abounds
Le Figaro.
Read alsoOur review of Masquerade, by Nicolas Bedos: awful, rich and wicked
If Franceinfo recalls
“a high-flying cast”
, it nevertheless points out some scriptwriting imperfections: “
It is sometimes difficult to follow the different temporalities of this joyous stampede, as exciting as it can be confused”
.
"First a book project abandoned because its author was lost, by his own admission, 'in digressions',
Masquerade
transformed into a screenplay suffers from its narrative richness, even if it manages not to lose its spectators along the way"
, adds
La Croix.
Read alsoNicolas Bedos: "Isabelle Adjani had a lot of fun"
On the strength of a generally favorable review, the film did not escape much
harsher criticism: bling”
writes
Télérama
.
"Nicolas Bedos ruminates on his double-edged nihilism and ridicules his actors, against a backdrop of scams on the Côte d'Azur"
, considers
Liberation
.
“A luxurious cast and evil plot unfolding on the Côte d'Azur.
Avoid”
, advises Sud Ouest.
Without concession,
Le Parisien
delivers the coup de grace: “
In this ocean of boredom (2h14!), the men are all “pigs”, “fuckers”, fickle and violent.
Masquerade
also gratifies us with sequences of incredible vulgarity
”.
The specialized press is not left out.
“Some segments are perfectly crafted and the chrome casting impresses.
However, without a backbone, with its outrageous dialogues and its forced twists, Bedos ends up leaving its viewer in the lurch with its somewhat ugly, somewhat cowardly and globally repulsive characters”
declares
Première
.
“
Nicolas Bedos hopes, in part, to poke fun at the superficiality of the bourgeois Côte d'Azur with
Mascarade
.
It's a pity that his film is just as much,”
adds
Ecran Large.