Spectators! is neither fiction nor documentary. A hybrid and exclamatory object, it interrogates cinema itself, its processes and effects. An affective and reflective essay that centrally questions the place of the spectator and their role in the existence of films. If Bazin asked "what is cinema," Desplechin asks "what does it mean to go to the cinema," reflecting on cinephilia and the practice of spectatorship.
"More novelist than poet, more Truffaut than Godard, more day than night, Desplechin pours his heart into every frame, every sequence, every face, every actor, Julia Roberts under the screen-sheet of Notting Hill, because one day she smiled and made cinema simply possible. If Carax confesses to the camera that he has never shot anything but déjà vu, thus describing his constant feeling of imposture, Desplechin traverses the realm of spectators, questioning them about their disposition to tears, their 'place' in the theater, their imagination and their all-consuming passion for an art that seduces and does not bow to reality." (Marzia Gandolfi)
