The painfully luminous Annie Girardot—one foot still in childhood as though to defy the wear of time and emotions—invests “When I Will Be Gone” with her own personal distress. She has all the intensity of a long-smothered flame struggling to flare up again, before our very eyes. Jacques Leduc’s film watches her tenderly, tracing the glow of a dream cinema whose private tune obeys only the demands of the heart. It is often beautiful, and never ordinary. (Gérard Grugeau in “24 Images,” No. 92, Summer 1998)