The Workshop (L'atelier) [Audio: French]
La Ciotat, the South of France. Antoine attends a summer writing workshop in which a few young people have been selected to write a crime thriller with the help of Olivia, a famous novelist. The creative process will recall the town's industrial past, a form of nostalgia to which Antoine feels indifferent. More concerned with the fears of the modern world, the young man soon clashes with the group and Olivia, who seems at the same time alarmed and captivated by Antoine's violence.
21 January 1970, Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France
May 08, 2018
The value of the film is that it speaks of so many things without ever losing the flow of the story or complicating the collective motives... [Full Review in Spanish]
April 05, 2018
The leads are excellent...anchoring Cantet's sincere, complex mixture of discourse and voyeurism, as if the undiluted teacher/student naturalism of his 2008 film "The Class" had fermented into something more volatile.
March 20, 2018
Cantet remains a gifted filmmaker ... but this isn't the return to form that his fans have awaited over the past decade.
April 26, 2018
The Workshop would like us to feel like we watched something meaningful about a lot of different things, when in fact it tabled all the elements of meaning, set some of them rolling, but didn't follow through.
May 18, 2018
An intelligent film, voracious and meticulous. [Full Review in Spanish]
April 10, 2018
"The Workshop" never lets us know exactly what anyone really thinks. These tantalizing clues only add to the film's allure.
March 23, 2018
The film keeps you guessing, not only as to where the story's going but what kind of film it will turn out to be.
May 14, 2018
[Director] Laurent Cantet escapes from the social theme of his laureate The Class to get into the terrain of suspense, although The Workshop is still just as effective... [Full review in Spanish]
April 11, 2018
[The Workshop] deserves to be evaluated as the sum of its parts... [Full Review in Spanish]
March 22, 2018
An intimate and timely film ...
April 17, 2018
The Workshop is still, and then jumps... to what Laurent Cantet is more interested in: how it confronts and articulates society, particularly the French. [Full review in Spanish]
March 22, 2018
A thoughtful reflection on the sociopolitical narratives (and myths) of contemporary, crisis-ridden France.

