Strayed

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Once in a great while a film seems right in every detail. Andre Techine's Strayed ("Les Egares") is such a film.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

André Téchiné's beautifully ambiguous, exquisitely underplayed drama Strayed has less to do with the events and moral choices of the era that continue to shape French identity than with the timeless psychological effects of finding oneself unmoored from the familiar.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

As with Téchiné's best work, Strayed is a peculiar, lingering blend of robustness and delicacy--a movie with hardly a single wasted frame, incongruous word, or false gesture.

Variety David Stratton

A taut, suspenseful, linear approach, and a trio of excellent performances.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

What makes this film special, as in his other films, is the getting there. Téchiné is the master of subtle shifts in mood, an acute delineator of psychological interplay, and therefore demands the utmost of his actors.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

It begins with a montage of devastating black-and-white news clips interwoven with flashes of the flight of a terrified young widow and her two children. After that, the movie softens somewhat, but it never succumbs to sentimentality.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Téchiné gets deep inside the dread and exhilaration of people who have lost their bearings so suddenly they don't even have the luxury of grief.

Time Richard Schickel

Elegant and understated.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Strayed has the strange clarity of a fable. It strips everything away until only instincts and emotions are left.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Hardship and suffering don't drive this movie so much as a romantic's gloss on the two.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

War may set the stage for Strayed, but the film's real focus is something much quieter and internal: People caught in the throes of a transformation that is not of their making and struggling to adapt.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Begins and ends with facts of war, but it is really a film about the nature of male and female, about middle-class values and those who cannot afford them, about how helpless we can be when the net of society is broken.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

A disturbing drama about the dehumanizing and humiliating effects of war.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The story is dramatic and Béart gives one of her best performances, even if Téchiné's style has its usual sense of distance.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Techine's terrifying setup quickly gives way to a slower and less explicit suspense, in which every step and spoken word is heavy with intrigue.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Béart, too beautiful for words, brings a complex swirl of emotions, elegantly restrained and marked with pain, to this finely wrought work.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

French director Andre Techine (Alice and Martin) powerfully re-creates the mass exodus from the city and draws a fine performance from Beart as a woman struggling to shield her children from her own fear and confusion. Unfortunately the last act goes off the rails.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Téchiné has a reputation in France as an especially empathic director of women--Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche among them--and he has understood this Odile very well.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Strayed moves forward with an absorbing ruthlessness, yet without sacrificing those tiny incidental details that lend it singularity and power.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Long expert at unforgettable characterizations, Techine turns his talents toward creating an evocative sense of time and mood.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

It's an impressive, intelligent, compact piece of filmmaking...But Téchiné might be one of those directors whose work is best appreciated by critics and other filmmakers.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

The result is, alas, competent but unexceptional.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Beautifully shot, and graced with another winning performance from the lovely Beart, Strayed nevertheless fails because the relationship between Odile and Yvan never makes us feel the sexual passion it implies.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

The setup's a bit reminiscent of "The English Patient" -- except that Beart's much easier on the eyes and ears than Ralph Fiennes is -- but Strayed is even slower moving, if you can believe it.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Ostensibly a love story, the film is also handicapped by Téchiné's strong gay sensibility and clear lack of romantic interest in his characters.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

There's no emotional weight to either character, or to this far-from-dangerous liaison. All you can do is watch the slight story sputter, and try to figure out whether Bèart's formidable lips were made by God or man.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A picture-book French film that's pretty and trite, rather than edgy and moving.