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The Kindness of Strangers

✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Denmark, Canada, Sweden · 2019
1h 52m
Director Lone Scherfig
Starring Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Tahar Rahim, Caleb Landry Jones
Genre Drama

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

42

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

While the movie works to depict how kindness breeds kindness, even in the cruelest of environments, it spends much of the time watching its motley collection of lost souls chase their own tails.

30

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

As a supposed snapshot of life in the unaccommodating big city, and of the humane gestures that can soften that harshness, it feels utterly synthetic, not to mention a romantically "European" view of New York that's sheer nonsense.

40

Variety by Guy Lodge

Too much of the kindness in “Strangers” feels sentimentally story-dictated rather than born of profound human observation, leaving you with mild, woolly good feeling but little to contemplate or chew on.

38

Slant Magazine by Pat Brown

The film’s repetitive and lifeless dialogue robs otherwise charismatic performers of distinguishing characteristics.

40

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The Kindness of Strangers is one of those terrible ideas for a film: ensemble dramas that are superficially attractive because of all the big names shoehorned into the cast-list.

25

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

In spite of it all, the cast members do themselves justice for the most and I couldn’t help but be charmed by Riseborough’s wide-eyed decency as she hosts her frequent “forgiveness” meetings–not to mention be seduced by Nighy’s signature suave detachment.

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