Nocturama

Much like Bonello's previous film, "Yves Saint Laurent," "Nocturama" revels in pure experience. But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.

You're in for the most suspenseful film to hit town all year.

The frivolity of the film's unexpressed political earnestness-Bonello's unwillingness to give voice to his or his characters' ideas-is matched by the emptiness of its aesthetic.

It is at once damnable and debonair. It seduces as it repels.

You may not think that a movie that asks you to understand terrorists is for you, but if you give Bonello 130 minutes of your time, he'll make you a believer.

When the ruthless, faceless power of the state finally asserts itself, what is meant to be a shocking climax merits little more than a nod and a shrug.

The film is a carefully constructed hall of mirrors within which Bonello shows us the horror of anger without empathy, and the state as the most terrifying player of all. It is a pitch black allegory for our time.

Mesmerising and provocative... with a simply stunning command of his visceral visuals and unnerving mood.

Exquisite cinema. A sly siren, Nocturama is narcotic phase, slow-burn haze, a shifty, shifting thriller inspecting terrorism and youth. A bombing plot, a dance of death... Another distracted, neglected, maligned generation.

Testing the viewer's position on who or what the victims are here is partly what makes Nocturama such a horribly exhilarating and rewarding piece of cinema.

Nocturama might best be seen as a surrealist thought experiment.

Nocturama is a gut punch wrapped in a velvet glove; it's so intensely visceral and visually impressive that it short-circuits interpretation.