Featuring a killer gathering of performers, from Mathieu Amalric to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard, the new movie from Arnaud Desplechin, Ismael’s Ghosts, opens this week. My review is at Film Journal International:

If a person who had just seen Ismael’s Ghosts were asked, “Did you like the movie?” they could be tempted to respond, “Which one?” There is the romance between an acting-out director and the woman who calms him; the seemingly dead person who comes back to life, the other filmmaker losing his mind; the spy story being filmed by the first director; the biographical backstory to that story; and so on. The movie’s restless spirit slides and leaps from closely observed romantic drama to glass-shattering melodrama to bug-out farce and back again. About the only thing missing here is a music number…