A Woman's Life
Kino Lorber | Release Date: May 5, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 11, 2017
Riveting in its slow and steady accretion of details, its penetrating and richly textured gaze, A Woman’s Life is a bracing reminder that our experiences are often shaped less by what we achieve than by what we endure. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijMay 4, 2017
The 31-year-old Chemla (Camille Rewinds) is a revelation in the title role and utterly mesmerizing and credible whether she’s playing Jeanne at 20 or at 47. Read full review
90
VarietyJay WeissbergMay 4, 2017
A Woman’s Life has the kind of majesty found not in the grand gesture but the modest detail, the kind that accumulates resonance with each seemingly minor event until the picture of a character becomes as complete as a painting by Ingres. Or a story by Maupassant. Read full review
90
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlMay 4, 2017
The ending is a joy and a heartbreaker, but what lingers from this revelatory life is that compact world Jeanne inhabits, and how each tragedy, each happiness, and each everyday gesture together accrete into the woman we discover again and again. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 4, 2017
Its images and scenes are suffused by an intensity that seems almost to be a quality of the light and air as they play across Ms. Chemla’s watchful, sometimes inscrutable features. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 7, 2017
A Woman’s Life is a very particular experience, told with consistency and without a whit of compromise. It’s not always exciting, but there’s something tremendously rewarding (and very sad) about the matter-of-factness of it all, the ceaseless indifference of time’s steady forward march. Read full review
70
Screen DailyDan FainaruMay 4, 2017
Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 5, 2017
Chemla has an expressive face and she’s photographed lovingly, in a way that would probably have caught the attentions of the great French Impressionists, but ultimately she is more of a sculptural presence than a fully fleshed-out protagonist. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineClayton DillardMay 1, 2017
The choice of low-grade, handheld digital images further reduces the film to the clichés of revisionist literary filmmaking. Read full review
60
Time OutAnna SmithJan 19, 2018
Don’t expect Austen-style humour, though: ultimately, you may be frustrated by a narrative that punishes its pleasant protagonist so thoroughly. But credit to Brizé and crew for an impressive piece of filmmaking with a refreshingly contemporary approach. Read full review
60
EmpireJonathan PileJan 8, 2018
Complex, poised and beguilingly earthy. Stephane Brizé’s decade-spanning epic is a sensitively performed, memorably fragmentary look at one woman undone by the feckless men in her life. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleNov 29, 2016
A Woman's Life is a modest chamber piece, a series of sketches revealing a life of quiet desperation, which eschews melodrama and, for the most part, platitudes but exhibits great tenderness and sensitivity. Read full review
58
The Film StageRory O'ConnorNov 29, 2016
While the viewer might appreciate Brizé’s lack of compromise, for such a stoic and rather long period piece, A Woman’s Life offers little else for the audience to cling on to. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloMay 3, 2017
Mostly, though, A Woman’s Life frustrates because it’s neither entertaining nor illuminating to watch a character passively absorb constant misery. Read full review
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