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100Beneath its surface of chronic suffering and hospital details, Chereau's best drama etches a humane, sensitive, and richly moving portrait of fraternal love struggling to mitigate human frailty.
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90Stringent, clinical and almost unbearably moving.
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90Son Frère is a real achievement, delicate, perceptive, somewhat muted but nonetheless strong.
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80Chéreau's film is an unsentimental, almost uninflected, account of a preparation for death, told with a painful clarity that eventually bleeds into compassion.
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75Son Frère is hushed, clinical, grimly paced, and moving.
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70Chereau boldly risks alienating his audience by presenting serious illness and all its attendant indignities with an unflinching clarity that's becoming a hallmark of his work.
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70Todeschini has the most physically demanding role, with a gaunt face and ravaged body that utterly convinces of the brutality of the ailment.
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63Chéreau keenly understands both his characters and their unwanted world, from the dehumanization that occurs the moment one enters a hospital to the hope and fear that take over when one leaves.
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63Gives a harrowingly accurate portrait of the indignities sometimes suffered by hospitalized patients - and the sacrifices their families make.
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60While its two credible leads are certainly up to the challenge, there's a relentless claustrophobia that prevents the film from taking on a fully dimensional life of its own.