'Ismael's Ghosts' Trailer: Arnaud Desplechin's Latest Gets A Director's Cut

Last spring, “Ismael’s Ghosts,” the latest from acclaimed auteur Arnaud Desplechin (“A Christmas Tale,” “Kings & Queens,” “My Golden Days“), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival with very little buzz. We called it a “watchable amalgam of all his best and worst tendencies.” However, it’s now landing stateside with a new version that might turn the tide of critical opinion.

Running twenty minutes longer than it did on the Crosiette, the film starring Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard now apparently has a “markedly different” tone than the version from Cannes version. We’re certainly curious, though it’ll be interesting to see how many critics who reviewed it last year, will want to give it another whirl. Here’s the official synopsis:

Ismaël Vuillard makes films. He is in the middle of one about Ivan, an atypical diplomat inspired by his brother. Along with Bloom, his master and father-in-law, Ismaël still mourns the death of Carlotta, twenty years earlier. Yet he has started his life over again with Sylvia. Sylvia is his light. Then Carlotta returns from the dead. Sylvia runs away. Ismaël rejects Carlotta. Driven mad by these ordeals, he abandons the shoot for his family home in Roubaix. There, he lives as a recluse, besieged by his ghosts

Magnolia Pictures will release “Ismael’s Ghosts” on Friday, March 23rd in New York and Friday, March 30th in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.