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100A beautiful and haunting film that tells this story, and then tells another subterranean story about the seasons of a marriage.
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100Remarkable movie.
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100A grand, dark, grave, severe piece of first-rate cinema.
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91The subtle selectivity of Leconte's eye, how he moves with great control from gesture to gesture, is matched by the disciplined intensity of the performances.
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91Leconte's signature on the film alone makes it worth seeing.
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90It's a kind of 18th-century "Dead Man Walking" but with that earlier film's foreground arguments against capital punishment pushed to the background here.
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88Has the resonance, eloquence and formal rigor of a piece of great literature.
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80Definitely worth a chance: although everyone in this fog-shrouded setting makes grand sacrifices, all you'll lose are a few tears.
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80Faraldo's most engrossing and inventive script, alternately serious and comic, is beautifully realized by Binoche, Auteuil and Kusturica, all of whom reveal a nobility of spirit and stylish gallantry so cherished by the French.
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80Mr. Leconte seems at last to have anchored his cinematic gifts to a story worth caring about.
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80Binoche is especially subtle and radiant in another splendid drama from Leconte.
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80For the director, Mr. Leconte, and for the usually volcanic Mr. Auteuil, the quiet, cumulative power of this film is a striking departure from the dazzling energy of their previous collaboration in "Girl on the Bridge."
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80A compelling French Canadian drama.
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Bosnian-born director Emir Kusturica delivers a superb performance as the prisoner, a brutish cipher who gradually reveals his humanity, and the delicate lighting often produces silhouetted faces that evoke the ultimate incomprehensibility of human emotion.
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75Leconte reconfirms his growing importance to French cinema with this precisely crafted, marvelously acted drama, which makes a powerful statement on capital punishment.
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75Celebrates a larger-than-life heroism that is, sadly, all too rare.
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75It doesn't get much more romantic than this.
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75Has its sluggish stretches, but the superb level of acting is more than ample compensation.
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75The director has concocted a tragedy that actually feels tragic.
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70A genuinely heartbreaking, romantic film based on a true story; frankly, if it doesn't make you cry, we don't want to know you.
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67Ppaque and not hugely satisfying.
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63Accomplished, middlebrow costume-drama entertainment. It's not so simple that it could be mistaken for the work of, say, Lasse Hallström, and yet it's not so sophisticated that audiences of "Chocolat" would be mystified.
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60Leconte films in an austere yet invigorated style; the action never settles into stiff tableaux.
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50It's impossible to shake the feeling that these are merely actors -- albeit good ones.
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50As stunning to look at as "Girl on the Bridge" or indeed any of his others, but it lacks the distilled intensity — and, surprisingly for Leconte, the wit.
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50Far from terrible, Leconte's latest movie suggests the work of a slightly hip preacher.
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30It's not badly made, but it's a drag. Leconte's virtues can't overcome the plodding glumness that prevails.