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Solomon and Gaenor
Sony Pictures Classics


8.1

based on 22 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 8 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and a scene of violence

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Nia Roberts, Sue Jones-Davies, and William Thomas

Set in the Welsh Valleys around 1911, Solomon & Gaenor tells the moving and ultimately tragic story of the love between a Welsh girl and a Jewish boy. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Paul Morrisson
DIRECTED BY:	Paul Morrisson
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 30, 2001 Video: January 30, 2001 Theatrical: August 25, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	102 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK
LANGUAGE(S):	English, Welsh and Yiddish (with English subtitles)

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A "Romeo and Juliet" tragedy of surprising power.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Its pleasures aren't so much in the inevitable plot complications, but in the passion of the performances and the spare beauty of the elegant framing and photography.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Told so simply and powerfully that it seems to carry echoes of earlier, timeless tales.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

With Solomon & Gaenor, it is hard to overlook the folly of the characters. Does it count as a tragedy when the characters get more or less what they were asking for?

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Nicely filmed and acted.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Does an almost dismayingly good job of conveying its characters' grim, bare-bones existence and the stultifying sexual and religious taboos that the lovers flout.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It doesn't lack for emotional intensity or persuasive, three-dimensional characters.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

A graceful, understated sense of period allows the behavior of the characters in this love story to be unusually nuanced, making their experiences seem uncontrived as well as archetypal.

Chicago Tribune John Petrakis

Has a melodramatic glow.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It takes us nowhere we haven't been before, except geographically.

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

Bogs down in a deep muck of inevitability.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

The film is in the key of "Romeo and Juliet," and it's a one-note tune.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The performances are uniformly excellent.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Well-meaning portrait of intolerance concludes as grand tragic melodrama, executed with a stately beauty in somber colors.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Feels repetitive and impacted.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The landscape and the lovers are pretty to look at, but two households divided should really pack more of a punch.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Although Morrison's drama feels increasingly forced and manipulative as the movie rolls along, the movie is competent if painfully predictable.

Film.com Jared Rapfogel

There's nothing terribly wrong with the movie, but nothing terribly right about it either.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Tepid tale of star-crossed lovers in 1910 Wales.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Paul Morrison's relentlessly unsurprising staging of a "Romeo and Juliet" story fetishizes its accelerating tragedies with morbid solemnity.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

By the time the heavy-handed Solomon & Gaenor is over, it has become such a punishing exercise in the self-evident that one is left numb and eager for escape.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

r h gave it a0:
Really bad! boring and hard to follow.

Chad S. gave it a 5:
After a roll in the hay, literally, Gaenor reaches down for Solomon's crotch, and remarks that he's different "down there", meaning, he's uncircumcised. In "Boys Don't Cry", Lana(Chloe Sevigny) sees Brandon (Hillary Swank)'s clevage, but prefers the illusion that she's a boy. In "Solomon & Gaenor", Gaenor's scenes with Solomon would've worked better had she been in denial of his heritage, but the girl is clueless. I was certain of this when she appears at Solomon's door and tells him that he was hard to find, like a community concentrated with Jews was the last place she searched. Gaenor's kind of stupid, and her ravenous sexual appetite, could be a behavioral anachorism. Solomon is no rocket scientist himself. Unbridled passion breeds irrationality, but Ioann Gruffudd's fatalism seems more asinine than inevitable because Gaenor doesn't strike me as suicide material.

Peter F. gave it a 10:
To simplify, one might call this "Romeo and Juliet" in Wales but there is more to the story; in particular, a Jewish peddler in a Christian community, a miners' strike, a pogrom that follows a labor dispute. The film is incredibly well-acted and beautifully composed.

Jonathan C. gave it a 10:
I was absolutely moved ... what a tragedy ... great acting by both roberts and gruffudd.

Matthew P. gave it a 10:
Great movie, great story. The acting is supurb. 10 out of 10 from me.

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Solomon and Gaenor Sony Pictures Classics

Solomon and Gaenor
Sony Pictures Classics