Overview
- The film follows Robert Zucchini, played by Fabrice Luchini, a celebrated reader of Hugo whose routine is upended by the return of a daughter he did not see grow up.
- The critic highlights Luchini’s gentle melancholia and self-referential persona, noting that the film’s impact may depend on a viewer’s taste for his trademark delivery.
- Pascal Bonitzer directs from a screenplay by the late Sophie Fillières, continuing his exploration of temporal contrasts around Hugo’s legacy.
- An overabundance of on-stage readings is criticized for sometimes feeling like a captured stage show rather than fully cinematic scenes.
- Contextual comparisons rate it less pertinent than Benoît Jacquot’s Par cœurs yet consistent with Bonitzer’s recent Maigret et le mort amoureux, with a father–daughter thread seen as promising but underdeveloped.