Cold Water (L’eau froide) is a well acted and quite realistic drama about adolescent youth with Assayas’s screenplay holding no punches and avoids some of the pratfalls of similarly themed movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Cold Water
— The Criterion Collection —
(1994)
Genre(s): Drama
The Criterion Collection | NR – 95 min. – $39.95 | September 11, 2018
Date Published: 09/18/2018 | Author: The Movieman
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The Criterion Collection provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
PLOT SYNOPSIS |
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In 1970s France, teens Christine (VIRGINIE LEDOYEN) and Gilles (CYPRIEN FOUQUET) are restless, prematurely disillusioned and utterly appalled by their parents’ listless attitudes toward life. They enliven things through sex and petty theft, but the latter lands Christine in a home for troubled teens. She breaks out, skipping town with Gilles, and the couple end up at a wild party in the woods. They then move to a nearby commune, but receive a culture shock there that strains their relationship. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.5/5 |
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Inside this release is a fold-out booklet with an essay by critic Girish Shambu. Features (all shown in HD) are on the lighter side by Criterion standards with new Interviews with Writer/Director Olivier Assayas (15:04) and Cinematographer Denis Lenoir (10:50), an Excerpt from a 1994 French TV Program (11:57) featuring Assayas and Actors Virginie Ledoyen and Cyprien Fouquet. |
VIDEO – 4.5/5 |
| The Criterion Collection releases Cold Water onto Blu-ray and was given a new 4K digital restoration which was supervised by Assayas. This looks pretty good for a nearly 25 year old film and presumably limited budget. Colors are decent without appearing artificially boosted and detail was relatively sharp. There were no apparent bouts of scratches, dust marks, aliasing or any other flaws. |
AUDIO – 4.0/5 |
| The provided French language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track sounds nice with clear dialogue levels and some okay depth, though considering it is primarily a drama, not much to really judge. That said, there was some every so slight noise but nothing overly distracting. |
OVERALL – 3.0/5 |
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Overall, Cold Water (L’eau froide) is a well acted and quite realistic drama about adolescent youth with Assayas’s screenplay holding no punches and avoids some of the pratfalls of similarly themed movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s. The Blu-ray release from Criterion has great/good video and audio transfers respectively while the bonus material was on the limited side. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.