- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
88By dropping in on this couple from time to time for the kinds of moments one of them might remember, the film is more honest than its characters.
-
100Lindhardt, sweet and childish and achingly vulnerable, gives a stunning performance.
-
75A tough, well-acted little indie.
-
80A well-written, sensitively directed relationship drama. In most circumstances, that's all it would be - and that would be enough. But lead Thure Lindhardt pushes the picture into realms of such exposed intimacy, you almost feel like you're dating him yourself.
-
63It's inspired of Sachs to lean on Russell for a kind of oblique emotional depth. But it's possible to leave this movie mistaking Sachs's soul for Russell's.
-
90Its subject is not addiction or ambition, or even love in a conventional romantic sense, but rather the more elusive and intriguing matter of intimacy: how it grows, falters and endures over time.
-
90Not only does this film gloriously fulfill the potential that Ira Sachs has tantalized movie-lovers with for years, it also help explains what took him so long. Out of lost love comes a terrific work of art; it's the oldest story in the world, but it always feels new when it's done right.
-
50Never lets viewers fully inside Erik and Paul's world, a reticence that isn't helped by the actors' fey, restrained-to-a-fault performances. That and a frustratingly episodic structure make what might have been a raw and inspiring portrait of commitment and boundaries a surprisingly uninvolving, arms-length enterprise. Keep the Lights On lets go just when it should be holding you tighter.
-
80Sachs hits notes we've rarely heard in gay cinema, in which the hedonist bleeds into the humanist, the ephemeral into the enduring.
-
78Keep the Lights On feels like a first-rate, late-Seventies experimental student film, or early Scorsese. But then the cycle of addiction takes over the film, and the plot about stagnancy ends up stagnating the film itself.
-
40The two characters are ciphers, and the script, which Sachs co-wrote with Mauricio Zacharias, is by turns underwritten or banal.
-
100This is a drama about finding one's self-worth; you simply have to see it.
-
70Delicately tracing the troubled nine-year bond between two men living in New York, Ira Sachs mines his own memories to sensitive, melancholy if somewhat muted effect in Keep the Lights On.
-
83Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction.
-
90A haunting, immersive portrait of a romance between two men, one that's marked - and marred - by both drug dependency and emotional codependency. Not unlike last year's gay-themed drama, "Weekend," it proves an important and mature piece of business.
-
85The film, though, is as sure-footed as their partnership is not - a nuanced portrait of emotional turmoil, persuasively acted, richly sensual one moment, wrenching the next, and unlike so many films centering on gay characters, not particularly concerned with things like coming out or HIV.
-
88The performances are first-rate, with Lindhardt particularly moving as a guy who's in deep denial about just how much he can expect from a relationship with an addict.
-
91Keep The Lights On feels less like a memoir than a collage made from diary scraps, evocative but not prescriptive.
-
75More than just a relationship drama of striking specificity, this is a naked confession about addiction.
-
70It seems odd to call a detailed portrait of toxic romance lovely, but Keep the Lights On truly is.
-
60While not quite on a par with Andrew Haigh's "Weekend," this is still an undeniably powerful piece of filmmaking.
-
60Keep The Lights On feels lopsided in its focus on Erik, with Paul remaining a strangely remote object of the former's romantic devotion.
-
Nov 4, 201280Every frame pulses with hard-gained experience: it may be the most lived-in film of 2012, and certainly counts among the most moving.
-
Sep 13, 201275The film is at its best in the bedroom, not shying away from the sexual relationship, but not being graphic about it, either. There is great sex, clumsy sex, tender sex - and it's all crucial to the story. Such genuine intimacy, whether gay or straight, is virtually nonexistent in American cinema. It's enthralling to see it here.
-
Sep 4, 201290With its naked but never self-indulgent depictions of sex and all manner of addiction, Keep the Lights On is disarmingly, at times exhilaratingly, human.
-
Sep 4, 201270A stiff central performance diminishes its emotional impact, but the visually alluring film's sensuality and tenderness give it a lingering spell.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 0 out of 2
-
Mixed: 2 out of 2
-
Negative: 0 out of 2
-
This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.