50
Scott Thomas is an accomplished actress who can do passion as well as she can do light comedy. But she never quite convinces as a woman prepared to endure every humiliation to pursue her dream of a new life.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
The class issues make them pariahs, the love scenes belong on Cinemax After Dark, and the emotions writer-director Catherine Corsini believes are so adult are clichéd. Still, Scott Thomas is beguiling as usual, the one expected thing that's welcome here
60
Tightly wound and crafted, with robust performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and recurrent Spanish Don Juan Sergi Lopez, the picture offers a rough, no-frills take on a story as old as France itself.
40
Leaving is a tawdry potboiler slathered riotously in portent, complete with a lamebrained detour into vengeance that only Claude Chabrol would be able to pull off.
50
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Here, a contemporary French white woman who yearns for liberté, égalité and fraternité is as much a prisoner of her circumstances as women were once upon a time and still are in some cultures, though truly it's all the clichés in this film that make her a captive.
40
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
In any language, the actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) does what she can to best serve her scripts, even when they're hopelessly beneath her.
75
Kristin Scott Thomas breathes new life into a woman who was invented by Flaubert and copied by Francoise Sagan.
75
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
Leaving is a bit too dry and controlled, as well as too relentlessly bleak, to be a satisfying melodrama.
75
The plot isn't a new one (remember Lady Chatterley?), but Corsini gives it a few twists and turns that keep matters fresh and suspenseful.