Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageAll Men Are Mortal (1995)
Director: Ate De Jong
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
WWII is over and Regina (Jacob) is the uncrowned queen of the Parisian stage, her avant-garde Hamlet the toast of the town. It's not enough: she lusts after immortality. Thus she falls under the spell of Fosca (Rea), an anti-social derelict who claims to be 700 years old. Could she live forever in his memory? Whatever its own merits, Simone de Beauvoir's 1946 novel emerges as a pretentious farrago in this clumsily literal Dutch English-language production. As a romance, it never gets close to the heart. Quite what the narcissistic Regina sees in the near-comatose Fosca is impossible to divine - and his own motives are no clearer. In any case, we don't care about either of them. Nor are Fosca's low-budget flashbacks to centuries past particularly impressive; any con-man worth his salt could contrive his supposedly death-defying stunts. Rea is terrible, morosely confining his acting to the eyebrows and up, but at least he's supposed to be mired in ennui - Fosca has seen it all - whereas Jacob is stuck with the thankless role of Europe's greatest actress, and in English. Perhaps Kieslowski might have made us believe it, but de Jong (Drop Dead Fred) is not quite in that league.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Ate De Jong
Producer: Rudolf Wichmann, Matthijs van Heijningen
Cast: Irène Jacob, Stephen Rea, Colin Salmon, Marianne Sägebrecht, Maggie O'Neill, John Nettles, Chiara Mastroianni full cast
Duration: 94 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Has David Cronenberg turned tame?
Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?
Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day
Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing
The 10 worst date movies
Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made
Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films
Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas
10 unlikely badboy biopics
Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects
What do you think?
Post your review now