Two pianos on VOD: a peak of romance (review)

After a detour through the documentary with Spectateurs!, Arnaud Desplechin happily returns to what he does best: grandiloquent family drama.

A few months after its cinema release, Deux pianos is now available on DVD and VOD (you can rent it on Première Max). The editorial team recommends the film by Arnaud Desplechin, starring François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Charlotte Rampling.

Watch Deux pianos on VOD on Première Max

Within the same intimate obsessions that it has been kneading and reshaping since its explosion in the early 1990s, Arnaud Desplechin’s filmography plays through variations and revivals. “All family connections are suspect” he has been saying for more than thirty years, and he continues to investigate today: having a mother, a mentor, a partner, a child, deep down, what does that mean about us? Back in Lyon after a long exile, Mathias Vogler (François Civil) finds Elena (Charlotte Rampling) which pushed him to take up the piano at a high level in France, while Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) faints for no reason when she sees him coming out of an elevator, and the mere sight of a child at the park plunges him back into a manic state and the bottle.

A mysterious time, the scenario of Two Pianos vividly reveals the weight that unsaid things take on over time, and quietly accompanies the gentle aging of an author with retrospective dreams. Artist or father, these two options are irreconcilable for Desplechin. And the neurotic torture of such a self-inflicted choice ultimately convinces with the skin-deep acting of Civil and Tereszkiewicz: we couldn’t do otherwise with Desplechin. A few comic flights pierce the story (the Jewish jokes that Claude listens to or repeats), and remind us that Desplechin has always been very funny. Perhaps in spite of himself? To face the trials of life, even if it means hurting a few, he too would not know how to do otherwise.

Of Arnaud Desplechin. With François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlotte Rampling… Duration: 1h55. Released October 15, 2025