Carnage
Wellspring Media | Release Date: September 5, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
1
Negative:
2

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleJonathan Curiel
A wonderful French offering whose jumping-off point is a bullfight. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
What emerges is an astonishing debut, unlike anything else you'll see this year. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
An amazingly self-assured movie, it percolates with themes and ideas, all held together by the gift of the bull's parts. Read full review
88
PremiereAaron Hillis
A truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneRobert K. Elder
Confidently directed and tightly constructed, Carnage announces the presence of a fresh, powerful directorial mind with each frame. Read full review
80
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Ms. Gleize, through a series of oblique, half-comic scenes and meticulous, rhyming visual compositions, offers up an elegant, discursive essay on carnality and carnivorousness -- on sex, death, meat and the ravening hunger for companionship. Read full review
80
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
A gorgeously morbid meditation on the interconnectivity of life. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Carnage is a film about the violence of living, of finding and keeping a place in the world, and though it's a work of preternaturally sophisticated philosophy from a director who's barely out of her 20s, this beautiful, bizarre movie could function quite well without its capable screenplay. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
There's undeniable pathos to many of these encounters, and because the director has a wonderful feel for color and knows how to throw a frame around the world, there's also unmistakable beauty. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarrit Ingman
Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Funny, sad, and tinged with magic realism, this ambitious comedy-drama is as original as it is nimbly directed. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Gleize establishes her multiple plotlines fairly cleanly, though once disentangled, the individual stories don't offer enough incident to be meaningful. They don't mean that much all put together, either, but Carnage is still highly watchable, thanks to Gleize's keen eye. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Dead flesh is a ruling motif, but Gleize's airy, observant personality makes even the graphic dismemberment of the bull, scored with flamenco stomps, buoyant and fascinating. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film becomes a complex tissue of intersecting lives, but Gleize handles each developing story with amazing ease, and the fabulist touches are the icing on a very tasty cake. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderStaff (Not credited)
This is certainly well executed, with a sense of fate and fancy akin to Pedro Almodovar's, but its glibness began to wear on me after the agonizing death of a Great Dane was played for laughs. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
It's a treat, nevertheless, to watch the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni in a rare leading role. Chiara Mastroianni has her mother's hair and face with her father's sorrowful eyes stuck smack in the middle, and she moves as if conscious of the weight of her genetic splendor. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterFrank Scheck
The episodes are uninteresting and the characters one-dimensional. Unlike the multicharacter tapestries of such filmmakers as Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson, the pretentious whole here is ultimately less than the sum of the parts. Read full review
30
VarietyDavid Rooney
Audience patience undergoes a far more brutal butchering than anything onscreen in Delphine Gleize's wildly over-reaching feature debut, Carnage. Read full review
30
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The whole is just a wan rejection of traditional story, as well as a weak slap at those who still bother to attack the story tradition. Read full review
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