90
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Its images and scenes are suffused by an intensity that seems almost to be a quality of the light and air as they play across Ms. Chemla’s watchful, sometimes inscrutable features.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
The ending is a joy and a heartbreaker, but what lingers from this revelatory life is that compact world Jeanne inhabits, and how each tragedy, each happiness, and each everyday gesture together accrete into the woman we discover again and again.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
The 31-year-old Chemla (Camille Rewinds) is a revelation in the title role and utterly mesmerizing and credible whether she’s playing Jeanne at 20 or at 47.
63
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
The choice of low-grade, handheld digital images further reduces the film to the clichés of revisionist literary filmmaking.
70
Screen International by Dan Fainaru
Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead.
90
A Woman’s Life has the kind of majesty found not in the grand gesture but the modest detail, the kind that accumulates resonance with each seemingly minor event until the picture of a character becomes as complete as a painting by Ingres. Or a story by Maupassant.
60
A Woman's Life is a modest chamber piece, a series of sketches revealing a life of quiet desperation, which eschews melodrama and, for the most part, platitudes but exhibits great tenderness and sensitivity.
50
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
Mostly, though, A Woman’s Life frustrates because it’s neither entertaining nor illuminating to watch a character passively absorb constant misery.
67
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
Chemla has an expressive face and she’s photographed lovingly, in a way that would probably have caught the attentions of the great French Impressionists, but ultimately she is more of a sculptural presence than a fully fleshed-out protagonist.
58
The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor
While the viewer might appreciate Brizé’s lack of compromise, for such a stoic and rather long period piece, A Woman’s Life offers little else for the audience to cling on to.