Desert Hearts

Samuel Goldwyn Company, The | Release Date: March 7, 1986

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

67	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Gene Siskel

The story is not sensationalistic, although its love scene could not be more emotional. It`s a gentle story of someone being brought in from the cold. Read full review

Clayton Dillard

It advocates risk and consciousness as the only means to overcome the cold, repressive hand of so-called normative thought. Read full review

Paul Attanasio

This is an astonishingly polished and nuanced first film. It deserves to be celebrated, not quibbled with. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Though not without problems, Desert Hearts is a triumph for director Donna Deitch and an inspiration for any independent filmmaker. Read full review

Bill Cosford

Desert Hearts offers its central romance virtually free of moral clutter. Deitch tries neither to justify her characters' actions nor to place them in the context of the "forbidden"; she deals instead with intimacy, pieces of their lives. [18 Apr 1986, p.D5]

Staff (Not Credited)

Deitch is well served by Shaver as the teacher and Charbonneau as the young seducer. Best of all, however, is the way the movie dignifies all its characters. Read full review

Roger Ebert

I might have enjoyed Desert Hearts more if it had been more subtle and observant about the two women. It might have been a better movie if it had been about discovery instead of seduction. Read full review

Rita Kempley

Given the low budget, there was no money for transitions or fancy wideshots, so the look is strangled, stranded and somehow like stagework. All the same, if you are a woman who loves women, you will no doubt love Desert Hearts. But it doesn't seem a good bet to cross over. [18 Apr 1986, p.27]

Vincent Canby

Desert Hearts has no voice or style of its own. It's as flat as a recorded message from the telephone company. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Helen Shaver, playing the lead, does a most commendable job as a character who starts by being all tied up inside, and ends up by melting and opening up to emotions she couldn’t even conceive before. Read full review

Sheila Benson

For a story about sexual awakening and discovery, Desert Hearts is a taut, fatally careful movie with no looseness--and no abandon--to it and no feeling for detail that would let these characters really live.

David Sterritt

The movie seems sincere in wanting to explore rather than exploit its subject, but any potential insights are cut off by too-obvious characterizations and plot twists. [04 Apr 1986, p.23]