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The Duchess of Langeais
Metascore
74 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 23
  3. Negative: 1 out of 23
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    100
    The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.
  2. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Glenn Kenny
    100
    The first masterpiece of 2008 -- at least by American release date standards -- the latest film from master French director Jacques Rivette is a masterful, multilayered, sometimes enigmatic work of dark irony, an assured tragicomedy of manners and more.
  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    100
    Jacques Rivette has brought the Balzac short story to screen as a superb chamber drama. His is a graceful work of austerity and formality that perfectly captures the chaos of repressed emotions that see beneath the rigid conventions of aristocratic society.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    100
    Duchess of Langeais seems to me a nearly impeccable work of art -- beautiful, true, profound.
  5. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    88
    Rivette's slow-moving but seamless study of the rituals of courtship has a disarming grace, even as its downcast hero, Depardieu's Gen. Armand de Montriveau, limps around stiffly.
  6. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    A highbrow chick flick that made me feel older, in a good way.
  7. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    83
    The Duchess of Langeais is a romantic dance of death.
  8. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    83
    Though not exactly a "comedy" of manners, since it's more melancholy than funny, The Duchess Of Langeais is very much concerned with how the rules of social etiquette interfere with raw human need.
  9. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    80
    With its sophisticated psychology, its brilliant story structure and its riveting performances, The Duchess of Langeais feels very new, even if everything about it is old.
  10. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    78
    Balibar and Depardieu make a compelling duo who exude an animal magnetism that's undeniable.
  11. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    The performances reveal precisely what Rivette wants to reveal, which is to say, in conventional psychological terms, not a great deal.
  12. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    70
    The picture has an unsettling, haunting quality that I haven't been able to shake.
  13. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    Rivette has aged into one of cinema's most ingenious minimalists. In The Duchess of Langeais he uses intertitles--bits of literary exposition--with cheeky understatement.
  14. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nathan Lee
    70
    Rivette is teasing his way, thinking afresh, playing a game but tweaking its rules, telling a story, but only sort of--making, in short, not simply a movie, but that ineffable magic called cinema.
  15. Variety
    Reviewed by: Russell Edwards
    70
    Rivette uses intertitles (including some direct quotes from Balzac) to move the plot along and underline the dry wit. Helming is both leisurely and exact, offering auds ample opportunities to intimately observe the selfishness and folly of two people who would rather fight than switch.
  16. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    70
    The Duchess is enragingly elusive and possibly mad; the General is very direct and also possibly mad.
  17. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    70
    Masterfully charted and adeptly played, but also rather minimalist.
  18. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    67
    The performances are solid and subtle, with Depardieu growing nicely into the brooding, smarter-than-he-looks roles his father tackled for years.
  19. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    63
    Rivette brings a refreshing realism to what could have been a stodgy costume drama, it's still pretty slow going.
  20. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Stephen Cole
    63
    A typically hypnotic, slow-coiling drama from 80-year-old French filmmaker, Jacques Rivette.
  21. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    60
    If anything, as it lathers up into an abortive attempt at scarlet-woman branding and a goofy siege on the nunnery where a dazed and confused Antoinette has holed up, The Duchess of Langeais works best as the comic bondage fantasy implied in its deliciously sly French title: "Don't Touch the Axe."
  22. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    50
    The film's a minuet fetishistically repeated until either the audience or the lovers go crazy. I'd say it was a tie.
  23. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    38
    Jacques Rivette's film is full of painstaking historical detail, but the behavior of the two nonlovers is mired in inaction and emotionally incomprehensible.
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