| 100 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The movie may be the meditation of an old man, but rarely has a supreme artist's twilight been so richly illuminating. Faithless makes other films on the same subject seem clueless.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
82-year-old Ingmar Bergman takes one of the most painful, shameful episodes of his own life and, writing for director Liv Ullmann, transmutes it into magical, brilliant artistry.
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| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
A domestic tragedy of lacerating vision.
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| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
Complex, challenging and richly rewarding, it glows with the kind of wrenchingly selfless portrayals that are the hallmark of the Bergman classics.
|
| 90 |
Wall Street Journal
A stunning drama that's distinguished by a magnificent performance; the most powerful scenes are those that play, as recollection or confession, on Lena Endre's lovely face.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
It makes us realize, suddenly, and with immense regret, what the rest of contemporary cinema so sorely lacks.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
What's best about Faithless is its honesty, its lack of desire to ingratiate itself with the audience.
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| 88 |
USA Today
The sometimes fatiguing slow flow in hour one is worth the labor because the power in this 2-hour triumph reveals itself gradually.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Ullmann's film is an achievement of heart and consequence, as full of integrity as Bergman, yet demonstrating more mercy.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Intriguing in the way it dances in and out of the shadow of Bergman's autobiography.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ullmann has honed a too-long and sometimes relentless film that delves into the selfishness of passion but also captures the elusiveness and unpredictability of love.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
This attenuated two-and-a-half-hour reflection on marriage, adultery, parenthood and the casualties of sexual warfare unfolds like a brooding autobiographical epilogue to Mr. Bergman's much stormier 1973 masterpiece, "Scenes From a Marriage."
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Held together by the intensity of its focus.
|
| 80 |
Variety
Liv Ullmann, directing her second Bergman screenplay (after 1997’s “Private Confessions”), extracts every nuance from the tantalizing material.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
What she (Ullmann) does achieve is a couple of scenes of lacerating power.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Bergman's collaboration with Ullmann began when he directed her in "Persona" (1966). Here, with the roles nearly reversed, she shows herself as great an interpreter behind the camera.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
A mesmerizing deconstruction of the brute nature of love.
|
| 77 |
Mr. Showbiz
Faithless, filmed mostly during Sweden's endless winter, will chill you to the bone.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Much of the film is so wrenching there's no time for idle thoughts.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
An intense, claustrophobic drama of love and infidelity.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Hits so hard because it feels so real.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Much of what Faithless contains happens off-screen, told and retold as stories within stories, and so the actors typically work like oxen.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Ronnie Scheib
Hence the fascination of Faithless: the tension between the script's dour puritanism--the craving of suffering, the wallowing in abstract guilt--and the earthy plenitude and innate sensuality of Ullmann's austere compositions.
|
| 70 |
Slate
Faithless is almost entirely insight-free. Bergman gives no indication that he understands the link between his alter ego's "retroactive jealousy" and compulsive womanizing.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Brilliantly acted and lugubriously paced, Liv Ullmann's fourth feature as director — the second written by her mentor, Ingmar Bergman — will no doubt be manna to those who miss the brilliant acting and lugubrious pace that characterized Bergman's late-period films.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bergman is finally getting around to asking himself questions he now realizes he should have asked long ago is not sufficient enough premise for a movie. The answers may be news to Bergman, but the rest of us might just want to opt for divorce.
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