greencap’s review published on Letterboxd:
It’s tough for me to really figure out the particular things that differentiate an honest, sincere film from a dishonest, insincere film, at least beyond an instinctive gut feeling. I think when something is truly great and deserves to be perceived as such, you know when you’re ready to know, which may occur on first viewing and may occur as the film grows and resonates in your mind. Either way, it’s tough and indistinct and my entire journey with film has been predominantly anchored around this question.
This is one of the examples of the honest and sincere films, and it certainly helps clear out some of the determinative muck. I think in the case of L’Argent, greatness materializes through its surgical efficiency and the concrete fluency with which its thematic language is spoken. It operates somewhere in between Cache and A Brighter Summer Day, alleviating itself of the brutal closeness of the former and the painful, nostalgic churn of the latter and opting instead for visual, tonal plainness. All the performative gristle is sheared off and all the stylistic pomp is ground down to starch, which leaves us with this; a cold, careful, and extremely matter-of-fact tale that slaps its garish normalcy on the screen and gets the fuck out.
Severely depressing and frigid. Awe-inspiring stuff for me.