80
Sensual and horrifying, The Patience Stone plays like a mesmerizing, modern take on the tales of Scheherazade and a parable on the suffering of Afghan women.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
The more typical approach transforms the material, and not for the better—rather than a revelation about how it feels to live her life, this feels like a document of what that life might look like as a conventional, often pokey movie.
60
Better to think of this as a star vehicle for Farahani, who almost single-handedly carries the film; the range the Iranian actor displays here proves that she’s destined for bigger things. Fans will just have to be patient.
90
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
It's the flesh-and-blood lead performance by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani as a profoundly conflicted Muslim wife and mother that seals this cinematic deal. She's superb.
38
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
While Atiq Rahimi's film may peel away the many layers of its female lead like an onion, the end result is still just an onion.
60
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Farahani — seen in “Body of Lies” and “Chicken With Plums” — is equally vibrant in a performance, and a film, that dares us to listen.
60
For much of The Patience Stone, Farahani is the movie, and as she shifts from fear to despair to anger to emotions she’d never previously considered, her magnetic presence goes a long way toward putting a human face on the film, more successfully than the material around her.
70
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Mr. Rahimi opens up an entire world inside the couple’s modest house, filling its few rooms with enough air, sharp words and slow-boiling intrigue that the walls never feel as if they’re closing in on you.
42
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
There’s only so much anyone can do with a conceit that amounts to a movie-length speech delivered to a coma patient.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Neil Young
A luminous central performance from Golshifteh Farahani distinguishes an ambitious if somewhat monotonously wordy adaptation of a prize-winning best-seller.