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100Everything about this subtly directed drama enhances its pathos and humor, especially an astonishing performance by Gorintin, a 90-something woman only a few years into her acting career.
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100At turns funny, sweet, sad, trenchant and telling. It's a gem.
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100The last minutes of the film are exhilarating, but its real triumph is in everything that precedes the ending--the relatively simple lives of the three women up to that point.
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91Superb family drama.
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90The kind of small film -- morally ambiguous, graceful in its admission of imperfect knowledge, at once specific and universal -- that expands our understanding of the emotional economy of family life, with its ebb and flow of love and hostility, secrecy and egregious candor. You must see this film.
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90If Otar is, finally, a mite thin and predictably structured, that takes little away from the filmmaker and her cast, who work hard at fashioning the most outlandish special effect of all: believable human life.
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90Working with excellent site-specific music and this trio of exemplary -- and exceptionally well-cast -- actresses, director Bertuccelli does a superb job of touching just the right emotional notes in recounting the consequences of deception and the importance of family.
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90Sustains a perfect balance of pathos, humor and a clear-headed realism. One tiny misstep, and it could have tumbled into an abyss of tears.
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90The film is traditionally and effectively made; it also is superbly acted.
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90A small film of surpassing beauty and sadness. Yet its bittersweet flavor isn't artificial, but rather the product of the slow ripening of character.
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Though Bertuccelli's film orbits around a lie, the story is really less about deception and suspense than it is a moving portrait of female and familial bonds.
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88Bertucelli nails it.
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88What an amazing presence Gorintin has. Never mind her hunched back and white hair, she's no crone. She makes Eka needy for happiness but susceptible to heartbreak. It's a great performance, full of both joy and the quiet, disappointing parts of being alive that come with knowing change is part of life.
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83This combination of fatalism, nostalgia and willfully naive optimism captures something essential in the Russian soul.
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80Almost unbearably moving at times, Julie Betuccelli's simple but sublime debut feature presents a portrait of maternal love and female fortitude that will reduce the stoniest of viewers to tears.
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80The relationship between Ada and Eka is beautifully written and utterly believable, while the film's central idea of compassionate deception allows Bertucelli to explore the nature of love, culminating in the film's masterful and deeply affecting ending.
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80Before and after plot mechanics, a drama of family tension and warmth.
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75Tells a story of conventional melodrama, and makes it extraordinary because of the acting.
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75This sensitive drama will appeal to anyone who has strained against the confines of family - or basked happily in its comforts.
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75The best actress currently on New York screens is Esther Gorintin, a 90-year-old Pole who provides the emotional center for Julie Bertucelli's delicate, bittersweet comedy-drama, Since Otar Left, which is set in Paris and Tbilisi.
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75Moving.
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75Shows how our family fictions sustain us, and how some truths are better left unspoken.
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70Bertuccelli's heartfelt film affords a unique peek into the hearts and minds of a generation who, after having been awakened from the lie they'd been living all their lives, must now face the aftermath of an entire nation's failure.
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70Julie Bertucelli spends part of the film letting her characters worry whether they've made the right choice, but mostly contents herself with capturing a place where hard choices have become unavoidable. Though her decision to pace the film to Gorintin's old-lady rhythms sometimes kills the dramatic momentum, in the end it's time well spent.
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70A trio of finely observant performances graces this quiet drama.
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Positive: 9 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 0 out of 9
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OsG.10One of the most intimate and moving films I've seen. Beautifully fimed, fabulously real acting and I'm not ashamed to say it made me bawl.
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BobS.10
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EarlM.10A superb film above love and family. Esther Gorintin is a wonder as are the other 2 female leads. A do not miss film.