40
This might have worked as a short story. As a film, it’s not viciously bad, but it’s dull.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The A.V. Club by Benjamin Mercer
While Still Life remains relatively successful at sustaining its plainly downbeat atmosphere—and at conveying the deep silence and stifled yearning of days and nights spent profoundly alone—it brooks too little subtlety in navigating many of the plot’s larger-picture developments.
42
The inescapably precious Still Life doesn’t deal in anything as truthful, complex and difficult as empathy; its only currency is pity, and that is the basest coin of all.
40
Village Voice by Jonathan Kiefer
When it's all over, Still Life feels disembodied and perfunctory, like a very respectful eulogy for no one in particular.
40
Still Life constantly threatens to become a better movie: John’s scrutiny of photos feels vaguely serial-killer–esque, and there’s a late-inning love interest (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) that you privately cheer for.
40
Marsan does his best to convey his character’s essential decency, but he’s hamstrung by Pasolini’s insistence on underscoring the emptiness of John’s existence at every opportunity.
75
Director Uberto Pasolini (“Machan”) has a gem in Marsan, a virtuoso actor who plays the role delicately where another might have laid on the pathos too thick.
40
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As the pace picks up, whatever spell the movie cast is shattered, and Still Life melts into a heap of sentimental slush.
63
Its fixation on life's quotidian aspects gives way to a less imaginative focus on an inevitable and overly familiar romance.