Metacritic reviews

While the cinematic moments and winks at French pop culture history will be nostalgic for many, it’s the bond between Deneuve and this new Marcello that resonates the most.

Low on laughs and with a thin plot, Christophe Honore's Marcello Mio is a quirky tribute to one of European cinema's most famous filial relationships.

By turns flippant and poetic, demystifying and just a touch reverent, the film thrives on whole-hearted collaboration from Deneuve and the other luminaries playing themselves.

Those with buy-in might find themselves won over, as, on its own terms, Marcello Mio offers a heartfelt and even occasionally moving show of artistic trust and collaboration, playing as an unambiguous love note from a filmmaker to his favorite star.

Some might call it a “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” for fans of European cinema. Others might say it’s a trifle. The film’s ending, however, amounts to a bemused shrug.

Marcello Mio, written and directed by French filmmaker Cristophe Honoré, and starring Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, and a host of other European artistic luminaries, is a cinema in-joke elongated beyond all reason.

It’s an indulgent doodle of a film, a self-admiring industry in-joke, an earthbound flight of fancy, unconvincing on a literal level, and unenlightening on a metaphorical level. Yet Deneuve, puncturing her daughter’s affectations and delusions with a wry and bemused smile, injects some real humour.

In some ways, Marcello Mio is the ultimate arthouse nepo baby flick, in which the child of cinema royalty embodies her legendary patriarch in order both to get closer to him and to purge herself of some of the demons that have haunted her own life and career — mainly, the fact that people have a tendency to compare her to her famous parents.

Marcello Mio winds up saying very little about industry power structures, or even about the barbed nature of celebrity.

The film seems at least partially aware of the ridiculousness of this story but never threads the needle further, blissfully unwilling to acknowledge or even comprehend the way any viewer would perceive the non-existent “problem” of having a famous parent.