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My Sister Maria
Metascore
58 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 10 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 10
  3. Negative: 2 out of 10
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Brave, heartless, and exceedingly strange, a quasi-documentary in which the actor Maximilian Schell mercilessly violates the privacy of his older sister, Maria.
  2. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    80
    A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.
  3. Variety
    Reviewed by: Lael Loewenstein
    80
    A tender, achingly poignant portrait of the Austrian actress Maria Schell, My Sister Maria is a valentine from her younger brother Maximilian.
  4. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    70
    One worries from scene to scene about whether the movie is a work of experimental art or just another ruthless intrusion into the life of a dying and, to some degree, broken woman. I'm willing to bet that Maximilian fretted over this too, for the film is as tense and fractured, as alienating -- and, finally, touching -- a work as it undoubtedly ought to be.
  5. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Maximilian stresses that Maria was an icon in postwar Germany, yet the saddest thing about her isolation and disappointment is that it's so common.
  6. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Janice Page
    63
    Artful, especially in the ways it avoids sentimentality and employs vintage film clips of truly riveting performances...But Maximilian's narcissistic examination of his theatrical family -- can be boring, and his creative license with the truth is kind of troubling.
  7. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    60
    A heartfelt but eccentric, pseudo-documentary tribute to his sister Maria.
  8. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    50
    In many ways this is an extraordinary movie: there's probably never been such a portrait of a major star in the grip of old age.
  9. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    25
    Intrusive, excessively brooding and narcissistic.
  10. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    20
    Deeply personal and deeply silly.
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