Synopsis
In the first of the three linked episodes of French writer-director Emmanuel Finkiel’s delicate, poignant Voyages, a bus tour of Poland, by present-day French survivors of the Holocaust, suffers a mishap: en route to Auschwitz from a Jewish cemetery, the bus breaks down. In the second episode, one of them confronts the possibility that her father, long presumed to be among the Six Million, in fact survived; but is he her father?
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Recommendations
- 91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Shooting with a respectful remove that captures an intimacy by sheer doggedness, Finkiel creates a rich atmosphere by simply looking, listening and peering past the surfaces. - 90
Chicago Reader
Finkiel (a French director who apprenticed with Godard, Tavernier, and Kieslowski) plants clues throughout the film suggesting that the women might be long-lost relatives but declines to wrap things up neatly. The very uncertainty--and the fading possibility of an end to their search--is what makes the film so eerie and poignant. - 90
The New York Times
This movie operates in the limbo between memory and oblivion that we recognize as daily life. It bears courageous and stringent witness to the impossibility of bearing witness. - 80
TV Guide Magazine
His (Finkiel) ability to control economical dialogue with subtle but unusually powerful images -- haunted faces peering out from behind foggy bus windows; train tracks that once carried other passengers to a death camp -- lend this quiet, unforgettable film an uncanny power. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
Finkiel's filmmaking is so careful and cautious that it becomes plodding at times. The theme is powerful, though, and the movie's sincerity overrides its heavy-handed tendencies. - 75
New York Daily News
Although Voyages is mapped with anguish and fear, director Emmanuel Finkiel's characters are survivors, and he never lets us forget it.
