Compounded by lush photography and carefully calibrated performances, Maya intimately renders the crushing and rehabilitative power of memory, taking hazy, elusive feelings and bringing them into the realm of the tangible.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Slant Magazine by Christopher Gray
The film’s intimacy is as precise as its intellect is vague.
CineVue by Christopher Machell
There are few outright surprises in Maya, and though things proceed roughly as we might expect there is a deeper sort of emotional revelation that comes from letting the story proceed on its own terms.
In some ways, it’s the softest and most subtle of her six features. In others, it’s the most violent and stubborn of the lot, stunted in many of the same places where her previous stuff flowed like river water. But if Maya isn’t the best of Mia Hansen-Løve’s films, there’s a wayward urgency to the whole thing that makes it feel like it might have been a necessary one for her to make.
Maya is full of the kind of tiny, keenly observed moments that make Løve such a special filmmaker.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
The result is a drama whose emotional charge is a tad more subdued than usual, even if there are several grace notes throughout.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Kate Taylor
Hansen-Love’s ability to evoke the unspoken remains in full play as she returns to themes of young love and emotional crisis, but much of the film is in English and both dialogue and delivery feel stilted. Meanwhile, it’s never clear why being the object of a youthful crush might be a good cure for PTSD.
Screen International by Tim Grierson
As much as her camera patiently and sensitively observes Gabriel and Maya, they still feel a bit distant, their unspoken hopes and fears just out of reach — for us and perhaps for them, too.