Dolores (2017)
89%RT Audience Score:
Awards & Nominations: 1 win & 8 nominations
Distinguished by innovative technique and Emmanuelle Riva’s arresting performance, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a poignant love story as well as a thoughtful meditation on international trauma
Hiroshima Mon Amour is a visually stunning and emotionally affecting film that explores the themes of war, love, and remembrance. While some may find the story too studied, the performances, particularly Emmanuelle Riva’s, are electrifying. The juxtaposition of erotic passion and political disasters is masterfully done, and the dialogue is a key component of the story. Overall, it’s a haunting reflection on life in the Atomic Age that will leave you moved and thinking long after the credits roll. Plus, it’s got a killer visual sense that rivals the likes of Orson Welles and Von Sternberg.
Production Company(ies)
Korea Pictures, L J Film Pandora Filmproduktion,
Distributor
Reel Media International [us], Criterion Collection
Release Type
Theatrical, Theatrical (Limited)
Filming Location(s)
Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada
MPAA / Certificate
Rated R for language and domestic abuse
Year of Release
1995
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Color:Color
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Sound mix:Dolby SR SDDS
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Aspect ratio:2.40 : 1
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Runtime:1h 32m
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Language(s):English
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Country of origin:United States
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Release date:Release Date (Theaters): May 16, 1960 Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Jun 24, 2003
Genre(s)
Drama
Keyword(s)
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Worldwide gross: $24,361,867
Worldwide gross (inflation-adjusted): $47,904,197
Worldwide gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 1,351
Worldwide tickets sold (est.): 5,224,013
US/Canada gross: $24,361,867
US/Canada gross (inflation-adjusted): $47,904,197
US/Canada gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 1,093
US/Canada opening weekend: $5,721,920
US/Canada opening weekend (inflation-adjusted): $11,251,354
US/Canada opening weekend ranking (inflation-adjusted): 922
Budget and Earnings Details
Production budget (est.): NA
Production budget (inflation-adjusted): NA
Production budget ranking: NA
Marketing and distribution budget (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
Box office net earnings to date (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
ROI to date (est.): NA
ROI ranking: NA
Aviva Kempner – Writer
Aviva Kempner – Producer
Director(s)
Alain Resnais
Writer(s)
Marguerite Duras
Producer(s)
Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfon
Film Festivals
Sundance
Awards & Nominations
1 win & 8 nominations
Academy Awards
All Critics (42) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (1)
Resnais’ visual sense is matched only by such masters of images as Orson Welles or Von Sternberg.
July 27, 2021
Jonas Mekas
Village Voice
TOP CRITIC
I was arrested by the way in which the film was shot and what it was saying, but I’ll admit to not caring much about the two people at the center of Resnais’ drama.
July 12, 2021 | Rating: 3/4
James Berardinelli
ReelViews
TOP CRITIC
Exquisitely beautiful and harrowing meditation on war and love.
January 15, 2016 | Rating: 5/5
Kate Muir
Times (UK)
TOP CRITIC
“Hiroshima Mon Amour” will always be too studied a masterwork for some tastes. But Riva’s performance, chief among its triumphs, remains electrifying.
October 30, 2014 | Rating: 4/4
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
TOP CRITIC
That rare movie in which present and past meld in every frame to convey a sense of time obliterated, or a dream having a nightmare.
October 16, 2014
Robert Abele
Los Angeles Times
TOP CRITIC
The first film to juxtapose disastrous erotic passion with the political disasters of the mid century.
October 14, 2014
Michael Atkinson
Village Voice
TOP CRITIC
The first minutes of this movie are shocking. Emmanuelle Riva knocks us off with her beauty while her character reminds us that we’ll never really know Hiroshima. [Full review in Spanish]
June 22, 2022 | Rating: 8/10
Victor Pineyro
Seventh Art Studio
The makers wanted to tell the story and do, in fact, tell it through images and speech. It would be difficult to imagine a silent Hiroshima. The dialogue is never really explanatory, but rather a key component of the story.
April 5, 2022
Bernard Pingaud
Positif
A profoundly moving narrative which tackles themes such as grief and remembrance.
January 3, 2022
Rob Aldam
Backseat Mafia
A stunning piece of cinema, Hiroshima Mon Amour is also one of Resnais’ most emotionally affecting pieces, for one cannot help but be moved by these lovelorn people, struggling hopelessly against the onslaught of time and the doom of being forgotten.
October 21, 2020 | Rating: 4/5
Nicholas Bell
IONCINEMA.com
It employs a foredoomed romance between a French actress and a Japanese architect as a narrative thread that binds together a series of haunting reflections about life in the Atomic Age.
November 15, 2019
Clyde Gilmour
Maclean’s Magazine
Here — for the first time since Eisenstein — we have a cinematic intelligence so quick, so subtle, so original, so at once passionate and sophisticated that it can be compared with Joyce, with Picasso, with Berg and Bartók and Stravinksy.
July 15, 2019
Dwight MacDonald
Esquire Magazine…
Plot
Instead of heading to Arizona for her next big story in what has been her illustrious career in her relatively young life, New York based investigative journalist Selena St. George heads to her hometown on a small island just off the coast of Jonesport, Maine upon receiving a fax from an anonymous sender that her mother, Dolores Claiborne, is the only suspect in what looks to be the murder of her wealthy employer of twenty-three years, Vera Donovan. Dolores, who reassumed her maiden name following the death of Selena’s father, Joe St. George, started working as one of Vera’s domestics upon her moving permanently into what used to be the Donovans’ summer house after Jack Donovan’s passing, Dolores ultimately moving into the Donovan house full time as her caregiver when Vera required ’round the clock care. Dolores’ employment, which was solely to save money for Selena’s education, was despite miserly and overly particular Vera only paying a pittance. Selena has been estranged from Dolores for fifteen years, when Selena went away to college at Vassar on a full scholarship, on Selena’s belief not only that her mother killed her father when she was thirteen – the death ultimately ruled accidental – but the trauma she endured at the hands of townsfolk who believed the same in their often anonymous taunts. Selena still suffers emotionally from the trauma, she resorting to various means of self-medication. Detective John Mackey, who led the investigation, believed the same, this case the only blemish in his otherwise perfect career. He, leading the investigation into Vera’s death, has seemingly had it in for Dolores for eighteen years, and already has it in his mind that if she could kill Joe, she could just as easily have killed Vera, with a strong underlying motive beyond the seemingly open dislike the two had for each other in their mutual name calling. As Dolores and Selena are forced to move back into what has largely been the closed-up St. George house for however long Selena will be staying on the island, old memories come back to haunt both of them, with the truth behind what happened eighteen years ago and thus what happened with Vera buried deep within those memories in the house.
Trivia
Goofs / Tidbits
NA
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