RogerEbert.com by Nick Allen

Rodin is no plain biopic, and it certainly doesn’t require knowledge of his work to get hooked on the film. It’s in fact best when it does away with historical details and feels like a film about an artist and their art form, who just happened to exist.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

Jacques Doillon's shrewd ellipses emphasize time as a great and uniting humbler and thief, allowing stray moments to suddenly crystallize unexpressed yearnings.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

But it’s still quite the mismatch of content to form — a movie as ordinary as Rodin himself was extraordinary.

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

There is never any doubting Doillon’s sincerity or artistry but his film is overly cerebral, unfolding in a series of encounters that fade to black and never build a dramatic momentum.

Screen International by Allan Hunter

There is never any doubting Doillon’s sincerity or artistry but his film is overly cerebral, unfolding in a series of encounters that fade to black and never build a dramatic momentum.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Rodin, directed by Jacques Doillon and starring Vincent Lindon as the great Parisian sculptor, does not, to put it charitably, add to the very small roster of Great Artist movies (such as “Lust for Life” and “Vincent & Theo”).

The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg

Signs of life are few. A desaturated palette makes Rodin as monotonous to look at as it is to endure.

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

It’s a movie that already seems like a dust-gathered statue, rather than something vividly, imaginatively crafted to reflect the burning intensity of so passionate and forward-minded an artist.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

The real Rodin imbued his clay with reverent, lusty life, while Doillon merely offers a buffet of nude day players.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Rodin is a meticulously reverential, handsomely lit and very dull biopic.

Time Out by Geoff Andrew

The script – chronologically linear yet disjointed, averse to melodrama yet often clichéd in a ‘hello Monet, hello Rilke’ kind of way – is deeply inadequate.

The Film Stage by Jordan Ruimy

Doillon tries to dramatize Rodin, but makes it seem as if there wasn’t much drama to his story.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

For a film meant to champion the powers of three-dimensional art, Rodin winds up being awfully flat.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is bloated with all the artist cliches, but freighted with mind-blowing dullness and joylessness.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Sculpture is the art of turning lifeless stone into something that looks alive, flesh, living bodies and movement. Jacques Doillon's Rodin, in competition at Cannes, does precisely the opposite, turning living beings - passionate artists, no less - into lumps of lifeless clay.