‘After Yang’ Getting Panned By French Critics

There are far less hipster doofuses in the French film criticism community, at least when compared to the US. That means many A24 films just don’t connect with the more refined tastes of these French writers.

A perfect example is Kogonada’s “After Yang.” The sci-fi film earned raves in the US, but has fallen completely flat in France. A 3.1 score on AlloCine, the French equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes, isn’t good at all.

Here’s a blurb from Cahiers du Cinema’s 1-star review:

If the plot is of a confusing naivety (the robots retain information without our knowledge!), the film above all has a lack of imagination. (…) If he softly denounces the sanitization of human relationships, Kogonada does not hide his pleasure in setting his characters in the heavy framing offered by the futuristic setting: Kogonada strenuously tries to tell us “look how beautiful it all looks and look how sad the characters are”.

Elusive video-essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada blew me away with his 2017 debut “Columbus.” Boasting a cast that includes Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and “Columbus” beauty Haley Lu Richardson, “After Yang” is a meditative sci-fi movie that just had too many ideas and a failed execution.

As expected, some awe-struck visuals are on display, but not much to grab onto. It’s as if Kogonada focused more on making his film aesthetically pleasing, but forgot to infuse substance. This is tightly-controled, unassuming and ultimately very forgettable stuff. The French critics got this one right.