50
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Carax's cinematic imagination makes it worth viewing by movie buffs with a sense of adventure and a tolerance for explicit sex.
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50
An often intriguing, sometimes hypnotic work, but one that quickly starts to unravel in the final hour as it becomes clear there’s not much beneath the emperor’s clothes.
70
This moody, rapturous adaptation of Pierre, Herman Melville's gothic follow-up to "Moby Dick," is never less than seriously romantic.
60
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Carax has a wonderful cinematic eye and a personal feeling for editing rhythms, and his sense of overripeness and excess virtually defines him.
80
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Plays out the notion of the forces of light being inexorably drawn to those of darkness, of the older generation betraying the younger and maybe even an indictment of European indifference to the Balkans' agony.
80
The film is at once breathtaking and ridiculous, and it's the tension between these two extremes, as well as Carax's own intoxicating style, that makes it essential viewing.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak
It's compelling, poetic, rebellious, funny and one of the few movies that feels like it's been culled from another time and place yet broodingly bends modern societal taboos.
25
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
Carax, with Pola X, has become a parody of himself with a self-indulgent, overreaching style that many viewers will find a struggle to watch -- provided they can contain their contempt for pretentiousness.
80
I'm not sure how elaborately I could defend Pola X, but I loved watching it.
63
San Francisco Examiner by Wesley Morris
A less confrontational, though positively gushing modernization of "Pierre, or the Ambiguities."