90
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
This beautifully realized movie casts a sensitive, secretive spell.
Sicilian Ghost Story
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Italy,
- France,
- Switzerland
- 2017
- · 122m
Director
Antonio Piazza
Cast
Julia Jedlikowska,
Gaetano Fernandez,
Corinne Musallari,
Andrea Falzone,
Federico Finocchiaro
Genre
Mystery,
Drama
In a little Sicilian village at the edge of a forest, Giuseppe, a boy of 13, vanishes. Luna, his classmate who loves him, refuses to accept his mysterious disappearance. She rebels against the silence and complicity that surround her, and to find him she descends into the dark world which has swallowed him up and which has a lake as its mysterious entrance.
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What are critics saying?
88
Movie Nation by Roger Moore
A scenic, poetic, striking and moving thriller about Sicily’s “problem” viewed through the lens of youth and young love. The spooky overtones make its title an honest one, even if the frights are few. This is a “Ghost Story” well worth telling, and seeing.
80
Variety by Jay Weissberg
The filmmaking doesn’t simply tell a story but makes us feel its impact.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Despite some dead time and teenage moments, the film is lifted up by its belief in the imagination.
80
Empire by Alex Godfrey
Bewildering in all the right ways, this is a poetic, sublime interpretation of a sorry story. An evocative, emotional experience, it pits humanity against inhumanity, resulting in something refreshingly new.
80
The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide
While the fantastical elements provide a distance for the audience from the bleak core of the story, they also heighten the sense of enveloping melancholy of this aching tale of thwarted first love.
70
Screen Daily by Allan Hunter
The heady fusion of teenage romance, gothic fantasy and Mafia thriller becomes an immersive, atmospheric drama.
70
Screen International by Allan Hunter
The heady fusion of teenage romance, gothic fantasy and Mafia thriller becomes an immersive, atmospheric drama.
70
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
Although the story can feel chilly and oblique, it gets under your skin.
60
The Telegraph by Tim Robey
Summoning ghastly spectres of the real past, with the tragic ballast this one lends, always carries the risk that they’ll frighten mere fictions off the screen.
60
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It’s a film whose initial charge of mystery and intensity dissipates over its running time, the narrative impetus slows, and there is that question of tone that is very much not solved by the revelation at the end. These drawbacks are offset by the directors’ terrific confidence and visual style.
60
CineVue by Christopher Machell
While Sicilian Ghost Story doesn’t entirely fulfil its promise as a richly themed gothic romance, the visual craft on display throughout is more than enough to recommend.
38
Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen
The film is determinedly unclassifiable, blurring genres with a fervor that grows tedious.
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