40
Ivory's dispassionate direction precludes real involvement with the characters, resulting in a peculiarly austere depiction of a colorful era.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
Washington Post by Gary Arnold
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]
80
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
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.
70
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Almost always entertaining to watch and infuriatingly wrong in several important ways, chief among these being the casting of Miss Adjani as Marya.