Popular reviews

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★½

  While perhaps I liked The Chef's Wife (also with Emmanuelle Devos) and The Midwife a bit more, Moka is the type of movie I pray they make more of. It faces topics like the loss of a child, forgiveness, and revenge head on and features superb actors in a beautiful setting. I really don't know what more I could ask for.

  THANK YOU.

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★

  Mubi are doing a short season of French films from the last couple of years, several of which I will be ploughing through at my leisure in the next week or so.

  The first of them is this revenge drama from the relatively unknown director Frédéric Mermoud. I wouldn't imagine that this is likely to put him on the international map or anything as it is a fairly standard and occasionally plodding film, if quite intriguing and well acted for the most part.

  While it is patiently built from the get-go, Moka didn't really manage to sustain the mystery that is built up in the first half an hour or so and it feels stretched at only just over 80…

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  Review by George Hanna-Wilson ★★★½

  A super engaging character driven revenge thriller about a woman who obsesses over finding the driver who killed her teenage son in a hit and run. Emmanuelle Devos portrayal of this angry and confused mother in distress may be the best performance I've seen since Isabelle Huppert in Elle.

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  Review by Davide Staffiero ★★★

  L’opera seconda del regista di “Complices” (in concorso a Locarno 2009) è un buon dramma che ha il vantaggio di procedere per gradi, svelandosi un pezzo per volta in un clima di costante incertezza. Elaborazione del lutto e indagine morale tra le pieghe della normalità: pur senza giungere a conclusioni sorprendenti, il film si lascia guardare senza sforzo (gran parte della riuscita è comunque merito della brava Emmanuelle Devos).

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  Review by JP Fournier ★★★½

  Emmanuelle Devos gives a top tier performance as Diane, a grieving mother seeking revenge on the driver who killed her son. She's narrowed down the suspects to a mocha colored Mercedes and has inserted herself into their lives in order to get the truth. There is not a scene that passes where we don't feel Diane's anguish, her pain, and even her insecurities as her determination may possibly be leading her down the wrong road.
  "Moka" is a proper slow burn, simmering in heavy emotions building to a climax that feels like it's going to get more depressing and awkward before everything concludes. The more she gets to know these people, the closer she gets, and the deeper she lies, builds on the suspense as the mystery starts unravelling. And while the story does wrap itself up nicely, it still drops a gut punch of an emotional ending.
  This is how slow burns should work.

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  Review by Luke M ★★★

  Polite revenge.

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  Review by Julian ★★★

  Interesting

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  Review by Michael Casey ★★

  Moka, much like Diane’s quest for catharsis, is a slow-burner that never catches fire. Shot on the French-Swiss border and co-starring Nathalie Baye and David Clavel, director Frédéric Mermoud sets his sights on Hitchcockian material and ends up with pictures of pained people looking off wistfully into the horizon. If only that one mistake, that one tragic mistake, hadn’t happened we’d all be shiny, happy people.

  Full review at michaeljcinema.com

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  Review by Andrew Cochran ★★½

  There's really not much to say about this one. It looks good enough but bleh

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  Review by Nowell Miyagawa-Miskin ★★★★½

  Beautifully acted and well paced small scale thriller.  Character is the real driving force, not plot.  A great way to write a thriller but risky if the performances aren't this good.

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  Review by Ken Rudolph ★★★½

  Emmanuelle Devos is touchingly effective playing Diane, a grieving Swiss mother whose teen-age son had been killed by a hit-and-run woman driver who had been observed by a witness driving a mocha ("moka") colored Mercedes. Her obsessive search for the driver leads her to examine a French couple, especially the wife Marlène (Nathalie Baye, looking 20 years younger than her actual age.) Diane stalks Marlène, who is the owner of a perfumerie in Evian, across Lake Geneva from Diane's home in Lausanne. The film becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between the two women, both of whom are really fine actresses of a certain age. I was intrigued by the film; and, although I figured out the mystery slightly before I should have, just the beautiful Alpine lake scenery was enough to satisfy. And it isn't a spoiler to divulge that the final scene was particularly poignant.

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  Review by A. H. ★★★

  Emmanuelle Devos' Diane grieves over her son who has been killed in a car accident. While the police is unable to identify the driver, Diane starts to investigate herself and a slow burn revenge thriller ensues.
  In the vein of Hitchcock or Chabrol the plot unfolds elegantly without rushing from plot point to plot point. Instead there is enough time spend with character development and the brillant leads Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye building up tension and make up for lacking thrills around them.