Synopsis
A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.
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Cast
- Isabelle HuppertIsabelle
- Martin DonovanThomas Ludens
- Elina LöwensohnSofia Ludens
- Damian YoungEdward, Jaque's Accountant
- Chuck MontgomeryJan, Jaque's Goon
- Dave SimondsKurt, Jaque's Goon
- Pamela StewartOfficer Patsy Melville
- Erica GimpelIrate Woman
- Jan Leslie HardingWaitress
- Terry AlexanderFrank, the Cook
Recommendations
- 88
Rolling Stone
Amateur is Hartley heaven, a sharp-witted thriller that takes off into dark and uncharted territory. - 80
Variety
Just as quirky and idiosyncratic as the Gotham-based writer-director's earlier efforts, this one pushes the spiky humor a bit more to the fore while unfolding a tale loaded with offbeat oppositions and odd character detailing. - 75
ReelViews
Amateur is a curious mixture of high art and delicious campiness, and the result is a funny, insightful, and almost-hypnotic motion picture. - 67
Austin Chronicle
Amateur offers the inimitable Hartley style with a harder edge than his earlier films, and while the thriller elements of Amateur prove entertaining on a bigger scale, this entertainment may not endure for viewers not completely committed to Amateur's characters and Hartley's slow-motion storytelling. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
I found the idea of the plot more interesting than the plot itself, and am finding the movie more fun to write about than to see. - 50
San Francisco Examiner
The particulars of the plot don't make a great deal of sense, but Hartley's films have much more to do with style, or rather a philosophical refusal to show emotional involvement. - 40
Los Angeles Times
Hartley turns what might have been a lurid pulp thriller into a freeze-dried art thing. He squeezes all the juice out of pulp. [19 May 1995] - 38
Boston Globe
Except for a few coups de style, Amateur is a screenful of cool nothingness. [05 May 1995]
