An overlong film that half works.
- Jim Schembri, 3AW, June 30, 2012
Remove the subtitles, and it's one of Cameron Crowe's head-in-the-clouds dramas, as scripted by M Night Shyamalan...
- Mike McCahill, Guardian [UK], May 10, 2012
Whatever its flaws, in the moment this is one to set the film-lover's pulse racing.
- Trevor Johnston, Time Out, May 09, 2012
Playful, painful, willfully strange, deeply emotional and deliberately, delightfully obscure at times, Café de Flore, from French-Canadian writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.), is a puzzle-film par excellence.
- Peter Galvin, sbs.com.au, April 26, 2012
There's something quite haunting about the film, and perhaps more than one viewing is required to sort it all out.
- David Stratton, At the Movies (Australia), April 26, 2012
Cafe de Flore lays out an open-ended obstacle course for heart and mind. Stay the distance and so much will stay with you for some time.
- Leigh Paatsch, Herald Sun (Australia), April 26, 2012
More than the sum of its terrific parts, this beautifully crafted tale about the pain of love deftly reconciles two disparate stories - with stellar results.
- Colin Fraser, FILMINK (Australia), April 26, 2012
Vanessa Paradis is superb, playing the tough, single mother struggling in a prejudiced and very un-swinging '60s Paris as if her life depended on it.
- Ed Gibbs, The Sunday Age, April 22, 2012
Ambiguous and complex, Café de Flore is a fantasy about love - and not just the romantic kind. That is what makes it so challenging and opaque, because the parallels Jean-Marc Vallée presents are not comparable
- Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile, April 20, 2012
Love, destiny and dark clouds swirl together ominously as resentment, communication breakdown and desperation shake hands
- Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile, April 20, 2012
This is a gorgeous, flashy, widescreen epic, like Boogie Nights or Casino, about the most essential things in life: Family, friends and love. But most of all, love.
- Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald, April 18, 2012
Goes from intriguing to irritating.
- Kyle Smith, New York Post, November 09, 2012
Feels less like a movie than like a cinematic jigsaw puzzle whose agitation undermines the very continuity it wants to portray.
- Stephen Holden, New York Times, November 08, 2012
Decade-hopping metaphysical romance descends into overwrought histrionics.
- Neil Young, Hollywood Reporter, November 05, 2012
This mushy, mystical French-Canadian melodrama tries to make parallel a pair of love stories: one between preteens with Down syndrome in 1969 Paris, and the second between a Quebecois DJ and his new amour some 40 years later.
- Brian Miller, Village Voice, November 01, 2012
It's terribly long and repetitive for so delicately dreamy a diptych, and at times the modern-day story feels like little more than a drawn-out apologia for the wandering male gaze.
- Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2012
A forgettable film.
- Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times, November 22, 2012
The film's delicately curated textures are flushed down the toilet of narrative contrivance.
- Eric Hynes, Time Out New York, October 31, 2012
Jean-Marc Vallée deploys a pretty sweeping arsenal of clichés in shoving his camera through the characters' streams of consciousness.
- Steve Macfarlane, Slant Magazine, October 30, 2012
Disappointing, frustrating nonsense.
- Omer Ali, Little White Lies, May 10, 2012
![Cafe de Flore [SUBTITLED]](/GeneratedImages/Title.aspx/large/Cafe%2bde%2bFlore%2b%255bSUBTITLED%255d.png)
