90
Guediguian's seemingly sprawling but in fact quite precise picture takes a while to establish itself, but is eventually rewarding viewing.
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80
Leaves you reeling from the force of the humanity it captures and -- in its own gut-wrenching way -- honors.
50
New Times (L.A.) by Gregory Weinkauf
The challenge faced here by writer-director Robert Guédiguian (Charge!) is to keep his cheap melodrama from curdling his insightful societal appraisal.
40
The last-minute combination of Greek tragedy and Janis Joplin is so genuinely startling that, had the movie been shorted by a third, it might have turned everything around.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Intimate and human yet deeply ambitious, a powerhouse of a film made with a disturbing vision.
63
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
The sense of loneliness and disaffection makes its effect. Guédiguian offers no answers, and the hope he supplies is almost surreal.
63
The movie may not be as toxic and ultimately hopeless as Todd Solondz's "Happiness," but it also fails to find humor, dark or light, in anything.
58
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
It doesn't quite wash. Guédiguian has a telling instinct for the buried shame of working-class squalor, but his film is inflated with a doom that feels programmatic rather than earned.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
Fumbling characters find that survival is not a matter of economics alone, it's also a matter of hope.
50
Some of the film's situations and motivations seem convenient or underdeveloped, but Ascaride and Darroussin are riveting, and Guediguian's frankness and empathy illuminate this kaleidoscope of lonely lives.