See You Up There (2017)

See You Up There is the rare war film that feels both sweeping and mischievously alive, marrying the mud-and-blood truth of 1918 with a director’s eye for visual bravura and bitter, human comedy. Albert Dupontel stages the aftermath of combat not as noble pageantry but as a crooked carnival of survival, where friendship, grief, and reinvention collide in images so meticulously detailed they seem pulled from a haunted postcard. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart gives Édouard a startling, soulful intensity, while Dupontel’s own performance keeps the story grounded in bruised sincerity even as the film reaches for grand, eccentric flourishes. It’s not a gentle watch—there’s moderate violence and a couple of sexual scenes—but if you’re on the fence, know this: it’s ambitious, beautifully crafted, and emotionally sharp in a way modern period dramas too often forget to be.

See You Up There is reaching for a big, sweeping post–World War I fable about survival, corruption, and the ugly business of “moving on,” and you can feel the ambition in its stylish visuals and darkly playful edge. The problem is it tries to juggle so many plot threads and tonal shifts—war tragedy, crime caper, social satire—that it can start to feel overstuffed and emotionally uneven, with coincidences doing some heavy lifting. Character work, especially beyond the central duo and the villain, can get shortchanged because the story is always rushing to the next scheme or twist. If you like bold, theatrical French dramas that swing big even when they wobble, there’s plenty to admire; if you want tight pacing, grounded realism, and deeply developed arcs, this may test your patience (and it does include moderate wartime violence plus a couple of sex scenes).