The Super 8 Years

It’s a wisp of a thing, little more than an hour long. But Ernaux’s lucid, perceptive narration brings a more profound significance to the scrappy, amateurish reels shot by her late ex-husband, Philippe Ernaux.

Ernaux’s righteous feminism is subsumed by the huffy virtue signaling of a first-world moaner who doesn’t like skiing holidays, is bored by Moroccan snake charmers and is annoyed because she didn’t get to see “the real Albania”.

A slim film containing multitudes: a slice of life and time, richly grained with recollective detail. The images have a deceptive, universal simplicity.

An astonishing personal document, as well as a spry social history of modern France.

Well, it’s an interesting sidebar to the Ernaux canon.

This moving, probing, beautifully written film doesn’t completely eschew nostalgia, but like Ernaux’s books, it treats the past as a prism, casting varying light depending on how, when and where it’s held.

Astonishing diary film knits together the personal and political

The Super 8 Years flirts with greatness and fleetingly even achieves it, but ultimately falls victim to the limits of its medium.

The Super-8 Years might not be the most focused work of Ernaux’s career, but it offers a glimpse into the kind of personal intimacy that made her so beloved. A compact and worthwhile companion to all fans of her work.

This is a treasurable “home movie”, a movie about home.