80
If Bastards is cold, it’s never clinical; rather, it’s a fully engaged, deeply moral movie about people who are neither.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
A stylishly made but unyielding drama.
50
Bogged down by flashbacks and flash forwards, The Bastards pointlessly mixes up its ingredients, creating a distancing effect from the tangible sadness at its core. The result is the rare case of a movie that confirms its maker's skill while wasting it on useless ambition.
88
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
Conditioning the audience to find dread in every seemingly innocent gesture, the film turns even the simplest touch between family members into something tinged with menace.
67
The Bastards feels like what happens when an undeniably great filmmaker stoops to sensationalism -- it’s a smarter, odder film than someone else would make with the same material, but it’s still smart, odd sensationalism.
90
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The story grips you entirely even if Ms. Denis’s worldview here finally feels like a tomb: terrifying, pitiless, inevitable.
50
Style can't fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous affectations, proves undercooked, especially during a third act that provides duly titillating answers to its initially beguiling mysteries.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Denis's drama intrigues more than it actually delivers...Sleight of hand is all well and good. But sooner or later a film must pay up.
80
Even at its most opaque, Bastards always exerts a dreamlike pull rooted in Denis’ rhythmic layerings of image, sound and music.
80
Denis’ atmospherics, as usual, carry the day.