Vous n'avez encore rien vu 2012

A.O. Scott, New York Times: "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" is a sly, elegant meditation on the relationship between reality and artifice. But it is a thought-experiment driven above all by emotion. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: Not since Altman went out with A Prairie Home Companion has a director fashioned such a natural swan song. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Equally inspired by comics and experimental fiction, Resnais makes movies that don't so much break filmmaking conventions as circumvent them; at 91 years old, he remains one of the world's most unpredictable filmmakers, and one of its most idiosyncratic. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Alain Resnais reflects on some lifelong themes, and though this drama is characteristically eerie, it also conveys a calm that's rare in his work. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: This reflection on the past, love and death through the prism of layers of theatrical endeavor is both serious and frisky, engaging on a refined level but frustratingly limited in its complexity and depth. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: Resnais' occasional use of split-screen and other traditional special effects enhances the picture's various dualities, dreamy quality and decided staginess. Read more

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic: What affects us most is Resnais's ingenious idea. And that affect is magnified by a surprise ending. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Despite some hyperbolic excess, the process of Resnais' production is unexpected and free, and revisits the very nature of cinema, and theater, with a wondrous eye. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Digital technology meets lyrical drama and classical myth in this puckishly daring, intricately original work of docu-theatre from the ninety-year-old director Alain Resnais. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: Complex yet lighthearted, as diverting as it is meditative. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart. Read more

Lisa Nesselson, Chicago Sun-Times: It's, like, totally, like, "meta." Metaphorical, metaphysical. It's also pretty amusing. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Whether Resnais will complete another movie remains to be seen, but if this were by any chance to be his swansong, with its distant and resonant echoes of 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' (made 63 years earlier), it would certainly be a lovely one. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: What elevates the film is a pervasive, palpable sense of loss-between lover and beloved, young and old, stage and screen. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Though Resnais' gamble seems to have failed, it's encouraging to see a director on the brink of 90 still willing to experiment in a way most helmers half his age wouldn't dare. Read more

Calum Marsh, Village Voice: The title isn't meant to be taken as ironic: This is the work of a director very much capable of surprise. Read more