Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

It's a movie of elegant surfaces, great background music (by both the Mahlers), gossipy underpinnings and pretensions to romantic grandeur.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

A rather dull movie.

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

Was Alma a masochist? Repressed? Neurotic? A pre-feminist? Don't look for insight here.

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

For all the talk of artistic and amorous passion, the film is trapped in snobbish inertia; its idea of period drama amounts to a kind of highbrow name- dropping.

New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

There's great music and lovely settings, but the filmmakers have done little more with their subject than reiterate the Britannica's description of her.

L.A. Weekly by Chuck Wilson

She is known as one of the great muses, yet director Bruce Beresford, Wynter and screenwriter Marilyn Levy are never clear if this is by design or chance.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

The stifling piety of this film -- which regards anything old and vaguely arty as next to sacred -- needs some serious airing out.

New Times (L.A.) by Bill Gallo

Moviegoers might have preferred a little more care with the characters. As it is, Alma comes off not as a courageous trailblazer but as an indiscriminate adventuress.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

Ms. Wynter's performance is only one of many failings in a heavily accented costume drama that Bruce Beresford has directed turgidly from Marilyn Levy's amateurish script.

Chicago Reader by Lisa Alspector

Director Bruce Beresford -- not intending to be funny but succeeding wildly.