France, United Kingdom · 2000
2h 22m
Director Arnaud Desplechin
Starring Summer Phoenix, Ian Holm, Fabrice Desplechin, Akbar Kurtha
Genre Drama, Romance
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A Jewish girl in 19th century London dreams of becoming a stage actress.
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
It is also possible that the problem lies not with Mr. Desplechin but with Ms. Phoenix. Her Esther is a fascinating mixture of passivity and ferocity, but it's not clear that she has the range to show both sides of the character.
It's a charcoal draft of a movie -- magically allusive on some levels and utterly opaque on others, a strange combination of the overexplicit and the unwritten.
New Times (L.A.) by David Ehrenstein
At 145 minutes it's a bit of a stretch, but the cinematographer is the great Eric Gautier ("Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train," "Pola X") and the score by Howard Shore is far superior to his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings."
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Desplechin wants to film an adventure of the human spirit in the manner of a Hitchcockian drama, but he doesn't have a solid enough grasp of English culture to equal the complexity of his French productions like "The Sentinel" and "The Life of the Dead."
This is a movie about the nature of acting -- or, more specifically, the nature that creates an actress -- centered on what appears to be a spectacularly unconvincing title-role performance.
Ranks among the best films ever made about the acting profession.
Brilliantly edited and gorgeously shot, Esther Kahn is a dream to look at and, courtesy of Howard Shore's minor chords and high-strung strings, definitely something to hear.
New York Post by Megan Lehmann
How do you inject life into a film whose central character is dull, slow, stupid and grim?If you're Arnaud Desplechin, you don't.
Summer Phoenix has a screen presence that's simultaneously distancing and transfixing, an inscrutability that makes her seem either mysterious or a complete blank.
Senselessly long at two-and-three-quarters hours and with a protracted climax that eradicates any goodwill established in the fastidious first couple of reels.
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