63
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
It's occasionally too icily removed, but it compensates through its perpetual concern with understanding its characters and their untenable situations.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
It’s a near-perfect portrait of a domestic tragedy as a master-and-servant psychodrama, one that leaves catastrophic collateral damage in its wake.
42
When the final moment comes and it's revealed how the children died, it's less of a surprise than a shrug. Drama robbed of suspense is just dull.
75
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Though Lafosse’s handling of the actors is pitch-perfect, his sense of structure is more problematic. The decision to start the movie at the end and then jump back several years undercuts the drama.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Reteaming to play a duo similar to the one in A Prophet, Rahim and Arestrup maintain the film’s tense and sinister tone – the former providing a convincing mix of fragility and machismo, and the latter looking and acting more and more like Brando in the latter half of his career.
90
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Much like the Dardennes, Mr. Joachim holds to the truth that the personal is political, which is why this isn’t simply a movie about a woman and an unspeakable crime, but also an exploration of the power and cruelty that brought her to that very dark place.
50
The movie fails, but it’s like watching R.P. McMurphy try to lift that huge marble fixture in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest—at least they tried, goddammit.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Émilie Dequenne is the young actor who made a powerful debut in the Dardenne brothers' prize-winning film "Rosetta" in 1999, and what a superb performance she gives now in this inexpressibly painful drama.
58
Portland Oregonian by Stan Hall
A drab, gloomy drama that doesn't provide any real enlightenment about why something so awful could happen.
80
Can a film that holds no surprises be of value? In the case of Our Children, which masterfully plays with stylistic conventions and all-too-common instances of real-life matricide, the answer is decidedly yes.