X
  • 1981
  • R
  • New World Pictures
  • 1 h 41 m
  • 1981
  • R
  • New World Pictures
  • 1 h 41 m

Summary Marya finds herself penniless after her art dealer husband, Stephan, is convicted of theft. Marya accepts the hospitality of a strange couple, H.J. and Lois Heidler, who lets her live in their house.

Directed By: James Ivory

Written By: Jean Rhys, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Michel Maingois, James Ivory

  • 1981
  • R
  • New World Pictures
  • 1 h 41 m
  • 1981
  • R
  • New World Pictures
  • 1 h 41 m

Quartet

Metascore Generally Favorable Based on 7 Critic Reviews
62
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Where to Watch

Summary Marya finds herself penniless after her art dealer husband, Stephan, is convicted of theft. Marya accepts the hospitality of a strange couple, H.J. and Lois Heidler, who lets her live in their house.

Directed By: James Ivory

Written By: Jean Rhys, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Michel Maingois, James Ivory

Where to Watch

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 7 Critic Reviews
62
43% Positive
3 Reviews
57% Mixed
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 7 Critic Reviews
62
43% Positive
3 Reviews
57% Mixed
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
80
Whether the arc of Marya’s fate feels overly engineered to you or not, Quartet retains its power to unsettle in its accumulation of cuts and bruises, the rare Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala effort that mines a glamorized past not for nuanced dignity but for a kind of elegant, honest sordidness.
By Robert Abele FULL REVIEW
70
Their best work since the fresh and appealing studies in cultural clash they made in India in the '60s, such as "Shakespeare Wallah." Movies are not literature, and Ivory is a dangerously literary director. But in Quartet he has found the images to express Jean Rhys's troubling vision of female fatality. [9 Nov 1981, p.94]
FULL REVIEW
70
Almost always entertaining to watch and infuriatingly wrong in several important ways, chief among these being the casting of Miss Adjani as Marya.
By Vincent Canby FULL REVIEW
60
Like their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]
By Gary Arnold FULL REVIEW
60
Maggie Smith and Alan Bates successfully personify the cold spirit that Rhys held to be pre-war England, but Adjani manages merely to reduce Marya's fatalism to spinelessness. The direction, intimate yet retaining a sense of distance, is true both to Rhys and to Ivory.
FULL REVIEW
50
Director James Ivory takes his usual aloofly observant distance and the film's love triangle loses some drastic impetus.
FULL REVIEW
40
Ivory's dispassionate direction precludes real involvement with the characters, resulting in a peculiarly austere depiction of a colorful era.
FULL REVIEW

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Details

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Production Company Merchant Ivory Productions, Lyric International, National Film Trustee Company
Release Date Oct 25, 1981
Duration 1 h 41 m
Rating R
Genres
Website https://www.kinolorber.com/product/quartet-blu-ray
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Awards

Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Evening Standard British Film Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
BAFTA Awards
• 1 Nomination

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