Almost Peaceful

Michel Deville

2002

Synopsis

Set during the largely unexplored period immediately following World War II, the film follows a group of mostly Jewish Parisians who attempt to restart their lives and rekindle their capacity for happiness in the shadow of unspeakable horrors. Variety called it "thoroughly charming. Sad, gentle, and funny in the best French tradition of high quality cinema." A film by Marcelo Gomes

Your Movie Library

Cast

Recommendations

80
Variety
A gentle, sad and at times funny film in the best French tradition of high-quality cinema.
80
Village Voice
French director Michel Deville has managed to preserve the work's great virtues--the intimacy, discretion, grace, and humor with which it speaks of both irredeemable disaster and the taste for life that survives it.
75
Christian Science Monitor
The gently told comedy-drama is more colorful than you'd expect, using wry humor and lively music to keep sentimentality at bay.
75
New York Daily News
These are people who are just waking up to life again. It may appear to be the ultimate non-action movie, but in the context of these lives, it is the highest kind of drama.
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)
The film was adapted from a 1993 novel by Robert Bober, who drew on his own childhood experiences, and as it unwinds, one begins to appreciate Deville's desire to see things work out well for these people.
70
The New York Times
It takes talent to make audiences care about ordinary people doing ordinary things, just as it takes guts to end a movie with something as corny as the sounds of children playing.
70
TV Guide Magazine
Deville gently reveals that they're all simultaneously hauntingly fragile and amazingly resilient, their smiles as piercing as any resigned gaze.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
It's a quiet film, shunning melodrama and political polemic. Instead, it opts for a human touch, conveying how a group of very different survivors come to terms with the past and plan a future in their own unique ways.