Or
Metascore
64 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 12
  3. Negative: 1 out of 12
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  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    Yedaya's prizewinning debut film is acted and directed with uncommon psychological realism.
  2. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    88
    Like mother, like daughter best sums up Or (My Treasure), a raw drama.
  3. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    83
    Yedaya is respectful and sensitive of everyone in Or's life and creates a beautiful, complex and rich relationship between mother and daughter, loving and protective of each other, but not of themselves.
  4. Variety
    Reviewed by: Lisa Nesselson
    80
    Consistently engaging, non-judgmental and cumulatively powerful two-hander marks a noteworthy feature debut for Israeli helmer Keren Yedaya.
  5. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    70
    Israeli director Keren Yedaya's remarkable debut feature, which won the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or, is a powerful study of a teenager's willingness to do anything to save her mother, a Tel Aviv prostitute who may be well beyond salvation.
  6. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    70
    For long stretches, Or is a dialogue-heavy kitchen-sink drama, but its naturalistic style and unselfconscious performances give it an intensity that only builds as it progresses.
  7. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    70
    A work of exceptional subtlety and is all the more captivating and heart-rending for being so.
  8. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    70
    Insofar as they're implicitly the spoils of war, this movie seems to be meditating on the whys and hows of the spoiling process -- raising more questions than can possibly be answered, and in this sense, at least, far from dogmatic.
  9. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    60
    The scoreless Or (My Treasure) consists solely of stationary shots that, while sometimes awkwardly composed, build in organic momentum and bracing detail.
  10. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    50
    Suffers from long takes, no music score, naturalistic acting and an agenda so stifling it doesn't allow its characters to breathe.
  11. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    50
    This well-meaning but irritatingly naïve feature delves into the horrors of prostitution, or more accurately, the filmmaker's horror about the subject.
  12. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    30
    Doggedly refusing artifice as if cinematic beauty were a filthy capitalist plot, Yedaya drowns her characters in realist grit, a colorless screenplay and no score to speak of, rendering this open book of a movie alienating in all the wrong ways.

User Reviews

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User Score
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No user score yet- Awaiting 1 more rating

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. AlanG.
    9
    daring, moving tale of mother and daughter struggles of survival in and out of the world of prostitution and drugs. difficult to watch at times like reality sometimes is...… Full Review »
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