91
In Martin Provost’s graceful biopic, Emmanuelle Devos plays Leduc as a powder keg of a woman who used her loneliness and insecurity as the explosive fuel for her work.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
Provost's film, like its heroine, is full of active, sparking nerves.
50
It’s a brutal argument to make: that the most relevant information to convey about the life of an influential writer is the fact that she struggled early and often. This approach may seem philosophically appropriate for a movie about existentialists, but dramatically, it makes the film a bit of a slog.
75
Slant Magazine by David Lee Dallas
By focusing on the tumultuous friendship between Violette LeDuc and Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Provost creates not so much a dichotomy of femininity as a funhouse mirror of it.
75
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
In Devos’ hard-charging performance, she’s also fascinating, and that’s all a film requires.
80
It’s a movie about coming to peace with solitude, leagues beyond most biopics.
90
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
[A] handsome, intelligently absorbing and stirring biographical portrait.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
As presented here, the novelist Violette Leduc is fascinating and strangely lovable, at least as seen from the audience. But actually knowing her? That would have been work.
42
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
A few excerpts of Leduc’s prose spoken in voiceover, expressing the same feelings poetically, can’t compensate for over two hours of maudlin self-pity. It’s so annoying that dull shots of Leduc writing serve as a welcome respite.
75
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
“Séraphine” was haunting; Violette, for all its writhings, is familiar.