Mjeteconer Just perfect...

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

treywillwest A spectacular and unique essay film. At once a philosophical rumination on the connection between art and power, a history of the Louvre- particularly during the Vichy regime, and a surprisingly powerful and human narrative of the French civil servant and German aristocrat and Nazi officer who collaborated to save the collection from plunder. Unflinchingly, the film equates art with plunder. As any serious study of the Louvre must, by definition, be this is a tale of Napoleon, invasion and imperialism. The Emperor is himself a character in the film, haunting the halls of his museum and reminding the director/narrator that all of the paintings are of him, for none of it would be there without his power. The point is also made that Paris was sparred the devastation of the war in no small part because the leading Nazis loved classical art and wanted the Louvre's collections for Germany and themselves. In a real sense, then, the film must uneasily acknowledge, the German regime was responsible for the preservation of much European cultural treasure. The Louvre, though to a degree the very phenomenon of the art museum, is made to seem like a place where humanism, the preservation of the human image, and sheer political force, come together. Sukarov's imagery is characteristically spectacular. The amazing, painterly light that he most often brings to the human face he here brings to the urban face of Paris. This film includes some of the best uses of crane shots that I think I've ever seen.

billmarsano Sometimes what we've seen before is enough. Director/ Writer Aleksandr Sokurov, who did so well with 'The Russian Ark,' a seamless, one-long- take tour of the Hermitage, does fails heavily with the Louvre. The computerized opening is mere gadgetry; a sour Napoleon brags about the art he stole for the Louvre; Marianne, the personification of France, appears serially, glumly droning Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité rather too often. Earlier Mariannes (e.g. Bardot, Deneuve, Casta) were at least lookers. Too much time is spent on stuff long-since covered by 'Monuments Men' and at least one TV documentary on the Nazi occupation and art looting. As nothing new is added, 'bored stiff' will have a literal meaning unless your theater has really good seats.

cyber-butt Having seen and loved Sokurov's earlier film "Russian Ark", I found "Francofonia" a disappointment.While "Russian Ark" also switches its scenes from one historical period to another, in that film it all came together into a coherent whole through its setting inside the Hermitage, as well as by its groundbreaking single take. "Russian Ark" was an astonishing cinematic tour de force. In comparison, "Francofonia" is just an incoherent jumble of unrelated thoughts.The theme that gets the most attention in "Francofonia" is the period of the German occupation of Paris in WW2, when the Louvre's collection was evacuated and stored in various chateaux and other locations throughout France as a precaution against the chance that Paris would be bombed later in the war. Interspersed with this is a series of vignettes on mostly unrelated subjects. We see the emperor Napoleon telling the viewer how the best of the Louvre's art collection was brought to France by him as spoils of war; footage of Hitler being escorted around Paris to admire the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysées and other monuments; scenes from the siege of Leningrad; a bit on the policies of Marechal Pétain, leader of the collaborationist Vichy government; a history of the Louvre building since its beginnings as a fortress in the middle ages; and a lament about the risks of transporting art treasures in ships over the high seas. Throughout the film we hear the voice of the narrator, speaking in Russian.It all comes across as a dose of revisionist history, where the underlying message seems to be: "The French were smart and did themselves a great favor by going along with the German occupation during the war, as witnessed by the fact that the Germans kept their hands off the Louvre's collection so that it survived the war intact. The Nazis were very cruel to us Russians, but on the whole they were not so bad." I didn't buy it.

GManfred Director Sokurov eschews the usual form for this type of film, which would be documentary, in favor of a sort of historical drama. It switches back and forth from the present era to WWII to the 18th century. It is an attempt to explain the history of The Louvre by integrating several different phases in its existence; The acquisition of much of the artwork by Napoleon in his conquests, transporting it out of harms way before the Nazi occupation, and a contemporary recap of the logistics and hazards involved in each phase.Can I be frank? I found the whole exercise somewhat confusing. I would get the gist of a particular scenario, only to have the director switch gears and move to another era and another circumstance, and having to readjust my focus and concentration on this new problem (where are we now?, I kept asking myself). I enjoyed glimpses of the Great Hall, the Mona Lisa and several other treasures that go to make The Louvre the epicenter of western culture. All I was asking was a little clarity.Maybe he just could have made it a documentary.