75
Nina Hoss is appropriately volatile in the role, her eyes working double-time as Anna’s sudden desires and decisions become more and more unhinged.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
Hoss’s work is impeccable and illuminating, and the movie’s foursquare, frank, brisk approach is salutary. But its final scenes lean into triteness and frustrating evasiveness, which makes the picture a less than entirely satisfying experience.
80
Weisse’s gripping, cool-blooded drama upends all manner of inspirational-educator clichés.
90
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
A treat that becomes a chilling enthrallment, one of those closely observed dramas you love — for its intimacy, calm authority and mystery — even before you begin to get what it’s really about.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Anna, who’s caught in a midlife crisis that deepens throughout the movie, clearly doesn’t know what she wants. But the problem is that Weisse, the director, doesn’t always seem to know what she wants either in this prickly, wavering character study that both confounds and compels, and that doesn’t manage to land its ending.
80
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
There’s a special thrill in seeing an actor known for her own eerie perfectionism playing a woman who can’t abide imperfection in herself or others.
25
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
The Audition is a harsh, and often cheap, picture that offers a fragmented view of a family diseased by the pursuit of perfection, who yet enable the behavior to continue at the ongoing cost of their happiness.
70
Weisse puts her own, distinctive spin on this film, keeping the audience guessing about whose story this really is, feeling its way slowly towards a bracing, risky dramatic conclusion that suddenly reshuffles the cards we’ve been dealt.
50
RogerEbert.com by Monica Castillo
There’s a quiet intensity that runs throughout The Audition. Although most of it feels like a subtle family and teacher drama, sharp anxious pangs occasionally disrupt the film’s otherwise gentle pace. Eventually, these feelings spin the film’s main character out-of-control into a truly baffling conclusion that feels neither right nor earned. It’s almost as if it were the ending of another movie entirely.
75
With great clarity, the film conveys how discipline can be directed both inward and outward.