Bastards(Les Salauds)

Time Out by

If Bastards is cold, it’s never clinical; rather, it’s a fully engaged, deeply moral movie about people who are neither.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

A stylishly made but unyielding drama.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

Bogged down by flashbacks and flash forwards, The Bastards pointlessly mixes up its ingredients, creating a distancing effect from the tangible sadness at its core. The result is the rare case of a movie that confirms its maker's skill while wasting it on useless ambition.

Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo

Conditioning the audience to find dread in every seemingly innocent gesture, the film turns even the simplest touch between family members into something tinged with menace.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

The Bastards feels like what happens when an undeniably great filmmaker stoops to sensationalism -- it’s a smarter, odder film than someone else would make with the same material, but it’s still smart, odd sensationalism.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

The story grips you entirely even if Ms. Denis’s worldview here finally feels like a tomb: terrifying, pitiless, inevitable.

Village Voice by Nick Schager

Style can't fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous affectations, proves undercooked, especially during a third act that provides duly titillating answers to its initially beguiling mysteries.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Denis's drama intrigues more than it actually delivers...Sleight of hand is all well and good. But sooner or later a film must pay up.

Variety by Scott Foundas

Even at its most opaque, Bastards always exerts a dreamlike pull rooted in Denis’ rhythmic layerings of image, sound and music.

The Dissolve by Scott Tobias

Denis’ atmospherics, as usual, carry the day.