Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten

A concept executed with bravura style, intelligent curiosity, and playful wit.

Boston Globe

Astounding. It is also bizarre, challenging, and, at times, admirably overreaching. In short, it's the kind of ambitious little film that can leave critics in a swoon and American moviegoers scratching their heads.

Boston Globe by Janice Page

Astounding. It is also bizarre, challenging, and, at times, admirably overreaching. In short, it's the kind of ambitious little film that can leave critics in a swoon and American moviegoers scratching their heads.

Film Threat by Merle Bertrand

Ultimately a rewarding -- if weird -- experience. It's just too bad that it takes so long to get there.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

Has its own peculiar charm.

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

It may take a half-hour to get one's bearings, but there's a payoff in the subsequent charm of this nearly wordless, surreal comedy set in a decrepit bathhouse in Bulgaria.

Chicago Tribune

It is filled with imposing and beautiful imagery, though it becomes increasingly monotonous.

Chicago Tribune by Patrick Z. McGavin

It is filled with imposing and beautiful imagery, though it becomes increasingly monotonous.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

The film's tone is a matter of taste -- the more you enjoy the melancholy silent comedies of Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, the more likely you are to embrace its sensibility -- but it's undeniably the product of a singular and beautifully realized vision.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

This one-of-a kind charmer casts an immediate and delightful spell.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

Helmer's wildly whimsical debut film, Tuvalu, is the kind of movie that might one day find itself in the hall of fame of surreal movie weirdness alongside cult favorites like "Eraserhead," "Delicatessen" and the avant-garde frolics of Guy Maddin.

New Times (L.A.) by Andy Klein

It's always risky to characterize a new film as "unique," but Tuvalu, the debut feature from German director Veit Helmer, has as good a shot as any at claiming that label.

L.A. Weekly by Ron Stringer

Allusive as all hell, Tuvalu's slapstick allegory of European socioeconomic upheaval in the 20th century opens with a spoof of "Breaking the Waves" lofty coda, then races through a mise en scène that's equal parts Tarkovsky, Méliès and the Brothers Quay.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

A disappointment, a precious and grotesque exercise reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen," only less amusing.