Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

This enveloping dream of an epic narrative experiment comes from the great Chilean-born, France-based filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained).

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Leisurely and digressive, this generally exhilarating saga ("a storm of misadventures" per Ruiz) variously suggests Victor Hugo, Stendhal, and (thanks in part to the unnatural, emphatic yet uninflected, acting) Mexican telenovelas. The score is richly romantic; the period locations are impeccable.

Variety by Rob Nelson

A handsomely mounted adaptation of the like-titled Portuguese novel, Ruiz's 4 1/2-hour epic establishes the essential ambiguity of its chameleonic characters from the get-go and proceeds thereby, with riveting results and revelations that continue right to the end.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

Once you start to ride with the rapturous, gorgeous, digressive symphony of images and words and music in this film it's completely absorbing and unlike anything you've ever seen.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

In Mysteries of Lisbon, the prolific Chilean-born director and egghead Raúl Ruiz has achieved something remarkable, at once avant-garde and middlebrow: the apotheosis of the soap opera.

Chicago Reader by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

It's smart, energetic filmmaking that also makes for engrossing entertainment.

Slant Magazine by Fernando F. Croce

A marvelously elastic storyteller, a dry wit, and a Rivettean anti-determinist, the Chilean auteur Raúl Ruiz is fascinated by narratives that dilate from within, images seemingly full of secret passageways, and fabulists who collect tales like toys.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

I got a little lost while watching Mysteries of Lisbon and enjoyed the experience. It's a lavish, elegant, operatic, preposterous 19th century melodrama, with characters who change names and seemingly identities, and if you could pass a quiz on its stories within stories, you have my admiration.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

It's a lot. But if you're at all inclined, it's just right.

NPR by Mark Jenkins

Ruiz, whose best-known films include his 1999 adaptation of Proust's "Time Regained," coolly roams the ambiguous territories between tragedy and soap opera, and between the traditional and the modern.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Mysteries Of Lisbon is an odd kind of epic: It's digressive and even trifling at times, and though a large cast wanders through the frame, the individual scenes tend to be focused on just two or three people, having winding conversations about political intrigue and affairs of the heart.

The Hollywood Reporter

What is left is the sheer joy of storytelling, and willing audiences will find themselves caught up in a what-happens-next page-turner of a film.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

A four-and-a-half hour period piece littered with interconnected events spread across many years, it moves forward with fits of intrigue, interspersed with casual developments that deaden its momentum and call into question its monumental running time.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Comfortable with subtle Proustian detachment, the director has taken another stab at colossal scope, this time getting lost in the cerebral folds.

Boxoffice Magazine by Richard Mowe

A feast for the eyes, Mysteries of Lisbon deals with 19th century passions, love affairs and escapades on a broad canvas. It might have made a lovely TV series, parsed out over several weeks, but at one sitting it's a challenge.