the film is just Henrique's Girlfriends / wives all talking about their time together, Henrique makes no contribution himself so the film is essentially lots of inter-cut monologues, the general viewpoint is that Henrique is eccentric and unpredictable, but a nice guy. His girlfriends are many and varied and in different countries this is a very personal film and i found it very emotive. It's slow, yet despite this at no point did i feel bored. I don't want to give too much away but it is obvious Henrique has had a roller-coaster love life and wears his heart on his sleve. This is very good and i would recommend it to almost anyone. 8/10
2 Reviews
A wallowing piece of naval-gazing with no public value from a director possibly in the throws of a midlife crisis
bob the moo29 October 2004
After 20 years of relationships, director and writer Henrique Goldman enlists a production team, gets a digital video camera and sets out to interview all the women who have been important in his life since he was a young man. Talking with old girlfriends we get a picture of his past relationships by listening to their opinions of him and recollections of him as a lover. At the same time we learn more about what he has left behind him as he has moved through each of them.
The good thing about digital video is that it has made the production of independent films easier and cheaper, bringing work to the public that may never have been funded otherwise. Of course the downside of digital video is exactly the same thing it enables people to make films that would likely not have been made for reasons other that cost. All The Girls is one such movie for me a film that kept me asking 'why?' all the way through it. The film looks back at all of Goldman's relationships and gets them to pick over the bones of their times together. None of those involved really have much bad to say about him, or rather nothing directly but it is obvious from what they say that he is not the nicest person in the world in the long term. The film is not really about the girls or the relationships, but about Goldman himself and this is its problem.
It doesn't really give us much of anything and it occurred to me that the film's main value will be to Goldman himself but certainly not to anyone outside of his life in the last 20 or so years. Very quickly the film falls into a sort of boring naval-gazing exercise that just started to grate on me. I tried to gleam insight from the interviews, I tried to care about him or his relationships but the film never helped me to do any of this and eventually I just stopped caring. I think the structure tried to gradually show us more and more of him/them but this didn't have much to reveal and wasn't enough to keep me caring.
Overall this is a poor film. It has all the hallmarks of a film that should never have been funded because it is such a personal thing with little or no value outside of Goldman's loves, lovers, family and friends. I have no problem with a bad film doing this but why not just do it for yourself why make this public when it has little or no public value? Occasionally it is interesting but it is hard to see it as anything other than a bit of pretentious naval gazing and wallowing from a director that (on the basis of this) was having a sort of midlife crisis at the time.
The good thing about digital video is that it has made the production of independent films easier and cheaper, bringing work to the public that may never have been funded otherwise. Of course the downside of digital video is exactly the same thing it enables people to make films that would likely not have been made for reasons other that cost. All The Girls is one such movie for me a film that kept me asking 'why?' all the way through it. The film looks back at all of Goldman's relationships and gets them to pick over the bones of their times together. None of those involved really have much bad to say about him, or rather nothing directly but it is obvious from what they say that he is not the nicest person in the world in the long term. The film is not really about the girls or the relationships, but about Goldman himself and this is its problem.
It doesn't really give us much of anything and it occurred to me that the film's main value will be to Goldman himself but certainly not to anyone outside of his life in the last 20 or so years. Very quickly the film falls into a sort of boring naval-gazing exercise that just started to grate on me. I tried to gleam insight from the interviews, I tried to care about him or his relationships but the film never helped me to do any of this and eventually I just stopped caring. I think the structure tried to gradually show us more and more of him/them but this didn't have much to reveal and wasn't enough to keep me caring.
Overall this is a poor film. It has all the hallmarks of a film that should never have been funded because it is such a personal thing with little or no value outside of Goldman's loves, lovers, family and friends. I have no problem with a bad film doing this but why not just do it for yourself why make this public when it has little or no public value? Occasionally it is interesting but it is hard to see it as anything other than a bit of pretentious naval gazing and wallowing from a director that (on the basis of this) was having a sort of midlife crisis at the time.
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