Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak

Istanbul-born director Ferzan Ozpetek has outdone himself with this wise and ruminative mystery about memory, unfulfillment and yearning.

The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann

Ozpetek is an enriching director. More than a presentation of its contents, every scene seems also to be a distillation of the matters that led to it. He can take a somewhat worn device--moving the camera around his people as they talk--and make it savory.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

The film is slick, beautifully acted and completely entrancing.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Facing Windows is rich stuff. Maybe too rich. But thanks to fine performances and a grounded script, the pieces of this intriguing little puzzle all manage to fit.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Ozpetek brings a straight love story and world politics into the mix, but it's his brilliant cast which completes the connection.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen

Girotti is especially evocative, his face an alternating current that switches from emptiness to alarm and back again.

San Francisco Chronicle by Carla Meyer

Poignant and carefully observed, the Italian drama Facing Windows portrays two consuming, illicit romances: one in the present, the other kept alive in faulty memory. The long-ago relationship holds far more intrigue.

Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

Gentle and life-affirming, if too sentimental in the end.

Portland Oregonian by M. E. Russell

Some lovely photography and even Mezzogiorno's hot-blooded performance fail to keep Facing Windows from feeling fractured.

New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

Ozpetek moves things along at a snail's pace and lays the sentiment down thickly. But it's a potent tale, wonderfully acted by Mezzogiorno and Massimo Girotti as the old man.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

Despite its surreal touches and an improbable story that piles on the metaphors, the movie, which has a rich, honey-dripping score by Andrea Guerra, maintains a tone of refined heart-tugging realism.

Los Angeles Times

Far from a simple, feel-good story of self-discovery, Facing Windows delivers a challenging examination of loneliness and human interaction.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Blends history and mystery into an entertaining, if somewhat slight, romance.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Gets off to a worthy start, but falls apart about halfway through.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Probably best skipped - unless you have a penchant for shallow, "comfortable" foreign films that offer obvious messages and never attempt to challenge the viewer.

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

Structurally, it's ambitious, but emotionally the movie never quite connects, spending so much time laboring over its parallel storytelling and its cosmic connections that the characters remain at arm's length, as intangible as reflections in glass.

Variety by Deborah Young

Only partially succeeds in interweaving questions of family loyalty with historical memory and the fate of Italian Jews in WW2.

Village Voice by Jessica Winter

Blends past and present to draw some utterly stupefying parallels.