Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Actors gravitate toward passion projects, films they care deeply, even obsessively about, but the end result is hardly ever as convincing as A Tale of Love and Darkness a film of beautiful melancholy.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

It's important to note what Portman the filmmaker is doing here. She is most assuredly not providing CliffsNotes to Oz's book, letting us see what Amos sees and only partially understands.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz

The Israeli author’s melancholy work might on the surface be an odd choice for Portman, but as writer, director and star, she takes to it with a fierce sense of devotion and even protection, creating a Hebrew-language drama about the tight, complex bond between a mother (Portman) and her son (Amir Tessler).

Chicago Sun-Times by Bill Zwecker

While A Tale of Love and Darkness is often difficult to watch — because of all the sadness it presents — it is also a beautiful film in that it makes us think about existing in a world where we do not completely fit in.

Entertainment Weekly by Joe McGovern

Portman’s evocation of this world has a strange, captivating pull. Assisted by the great Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Gattaca, Black Hawk Down, The Double Life of Veronique), she has created a visual landscape filled with nightmares.

Slant Magazine by Oleg Ivanov

The film mostly succeeds in capturing the nuances of an event that continues to arouse passionate debate to this day.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

There are many lovely and memorable moments in this film, which is in every way the opposite of a vanity project. If anything, Ms. Portman seems constrained by her own modesty, by a justified but nonetheless limiting reverence for her source material.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

It doesn’t help that most of the film is shot in a thick gray-green overlay that sets an immediate tone of abject dreariness. I’m not implying that Portman should have included high-kicking musical numbers to lighten the mood, but there is a Jewish tradition of mining the black comedy in tragedy that the film would have done well to avail itself of.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

She (Portman) has filmed the book according to its emotional meaning to her, and that’s fine. What she hasn’t done is whip it into shape as a compelling movie.

RogerEbert.com by Susan Wloszczyna

All it takes is one breathtaking shot near the conclusion of A Tale of Love and Darkness, when the aged Amos stares helplessly at his troubled mother through a pane of glass coated with teary rivulets of rain, to know Portman has an artistic vision worth sharing and developing.

CineVue by Ben Nicholson

There are undoubtedly kinks to iron out - the film has a particular problem with pacing during a section that requires careful handling - but this is a handsome and assured feature and certainly suggests a bright future behind the camera for Portman, who also stars.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The film feels like a personal project for Portman, but thankfully never a vanity one. It’s a fine piece of work – and you sense there’s better to come.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

Writer and director Portman's film seems conflicted over whether it is about young Amos or his mother, whom she portrays as a beautiful, cultured woman with a head full of romantic fantasies.

The Guardian by Andrew Pulver

Portman has made a film with something serious and interesting to say about Israel, a nuanced portrait of the place that demonstrates a commitment to, and connection with, her home country. This is an assured, heartfelt debut.

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

An overly self-conscious somberness infuses the film, keeping this heartrending tale from being as poignant as it could be.

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

Portman’s emotional connection to the material couldn’t be more obvious, yet the film itself is still largely inert.

Variety by Peter Debruge

[Portman's] drearily empathetic film lacks whatever universality has made “Tale” such an international phenomenon.

Screen International by Tim Grierson

An overly self-conscious somberness infuses the film, keeping this heartrending tale from being as poignant as it could be.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

Portman's screenplay shortchanges the dramatic potential of the material in favor of a by-the-numbers period piece.

TheWrap by Claudia Puig

A Tale of Love and Darkness seeks to blend serious political history and probing psychological analysis. The effort does not succeed, coming across disjointed and grim.

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

Portman wants to articulate something beyond the ordinary, and while she hasn’t found it in this picture, perhaps there are lessons here to be learned before she mounts her next effort.