Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

It's a very classy, finely made film, and, as one watches it -- particularly those last sweeping scenes of political turbulence and escape -- one feels both pain at their (Merchant-Ivory) parting and grateful for what, together, they achieved.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this oasis of romance amid the turmoil of Shanghai represents the way that Merchant and Ivory, for 40 years, saw themselves: as a sanctuary of calming, life-size taste in a movie culture grown coarse. It was often far from perfect, but I'll miss that sanctuary.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

The movie works best as spectacle: as a piece of old-style, non-CGI, on-location epic filmmaking.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Fiennes and Richardson make this film work with the quiet strangeness of their performances; if they insist on their eccentricities, it's because they've paid them off and own them outright.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

The film takes a long time to unfold, and some scenes feel inert. But ultimately, the conclusion is moving and satisfying.

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

Following his triumphs in "The Constant Gardener" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Fiennes is superb as Todd.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Fiennes's performance, tricky and impassioned, is the showpiece.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Richardson -- acting with her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her aunt, and her aunt Lynn Redgrave, who plays her mother -- finds the story's grieving heart. Fiennes is her match in soulful artistry.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey

Any resemblance between this film and "Casablanca" is purely deliberate.

Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones

Combines a delayed-gratification romance and rumblings of war.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

The director has staged the elaborate production in his usual stately but impressive manner, and the production values boast the usual Merchant/Ivory stamp of quality.

New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

In any case, the movie moves only when she's (Richardson) in the center of it, and her complex performance as a woman balancing her dignity with her survival instincts is one of the year's very best.

Los Angeles Times by Carina Chocano

The White Countess takes place in a fascinating time and place, rife with conflict and turmoil. But to watch Fiennes float (and Richardson trudge) through it all, absorbed in themselves and their own private misery, is to wish they'd started falling earlier, if only to knock some sense into them.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

With its tentative pace, fussy, pieced-together structure and stuffy emotional climate, The White Countess never develops any narrative stamina.

Variety by Justin Chang

This final production from the team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant is itself adrift in more ways than one, with a literate but meandering script by "The Remains of the Day" novelist Kazuo Ishiguro that withholds emotional payoffs to an almost perverse degree.

Village Voice by Ed Park

Alas, The White Countess, the final Merchant Ivory film, is something of a lacquered dud.