63
The film is ultimately, and disappointingly, revealed to be a contraption that's less concerned with mental portraiture than with getting all of its expository ducks in a row.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Complexly plotted, elegantly shot and orchestrated, this is the kind of long-winded, intermittently involving festival package that will earn the director of Tokyo Sonata more critical appreciation but will struggle to find a theatrical audience. For a film that requires nearly five hours of viewing investment, it feels terribly stingy on the emotional payoff.
75
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
The overarching theme is the slow, trickling spread of evil; the old familiar story of violence begetting violence, which Kurosawa is able to render in terms that seem mysterious and sub-rational.
40
Unfortunately, Penance is an example of a TV movie that definitely belongs on the small screen, to be watched piecemeal over the course of several days. Consumed in one gigantic, four-and-a-half-hour gulp, it becomes painfully repetitive and monotonous.
70
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
Mr. Kurosawa expertly modulates an uncanny flow of energies between shame and grief, between venal urges and high-minded moral demands. The women’s travails suggest something that’s part curse, part mythic cycle of guilt and part kaleidoscopic dread.
67
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
It’s a reminder of what a tremendously talented writer and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is, and hopefully we’ll see him venturing back to the big screen sooner rather than later.
60
While it doesn't cohere into anything more substantial than a collection of self-loathing anxieties, Japanese teledrama Penance is effectively unnerving on a scene-for-scene basis thanks to writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's preference for ambience over character-driven drama.