L'Immensità
Music Box Films | Release Date: May 12, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
98
TheWrapLena WilsonJan 20, 2023
By showing the tangled relationship between a mother and her dysphoric child, L’Immensità writes a love letter to the lonely. Read full review
88
ObserverRex ReedMay 15, 2023
A painful, heart-rending coming of age drama, L’immensità, which translates as “immensity,” is a sensitive, painful prize winner from the Venice Film Festival that mirrors the ethos and intensity of a tortured family’s experience in a time of change. Read full review
83
The Film StageJose SolísFeb 1, 2023
To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeAug 14, 2023
Of the two main characters, Clara provides the tonal touchstone for the film. Like her, the picture spins off into moments of unpredictable fantasy – musical numbers inspired by television variety shows. Music – peppy Italian pop, schmaltzy ballads – is inventively employed throughout, but the use of colour and costume is particularly evocative. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellAug 14, 2023
There is a vitality and a quiet defiance to this kind of filmmaking that is difficult to resist. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesSarah-Tai BlackMay 12, 2023
A love letter to its characters and their real-life counterparts, the film is, above all, a witness to the kind of expansive love and kinship that is formed in the margins but nonetheless expansive in its imaginings of the world. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 2, 2023
Like so many Bildungsroman, it’s a tapestry crammed with incidental details, just as busy as the fantastic vintage-style prints on the women’s dresses and the flammable upholstery in the interiors. But then Crialese, who’s always been good with performers, will serve up a moment of achingly sad stillness. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 28, 2023
For all its decorative twists and curls, this is a sophisticated, searching work. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisJun 29, 2023
Veteran Italian director and co-screenwriter Crialese (Respiro, Golden Door) embraces a vivid visual sense here, abetted by Gergeley Pohárnok’s sumptuous cinematography and the Me Decade fashion sense of Massimo Cantini Parrini’s breezy, eye-popping couture. It’s a look that idealizes memory, much like when you conjure up something from the past in your mind and try to make it stick there for a while. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayJun 7, 2023
L’immensità lives up to its title: It’s a small but all-encompassing portrait of how life feels in a certain time and place — when the broken pieces of one’s true self are invisibly coming together, even when getting them to fit feels too overwhelming to contemplate. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonMay 24, 2023
Penélope Cruz anchors a lightly drawn drama about a family in a quiet state of turmoil in the Italian film L’Immensitá. Read full review
75
Slant MagazinePat BrownMay 15, 2023
By turns wry and tragic, but never glib or mawkish, this is a visually rich and evocative drama about navigating the often treacherous path to adulthood. Read full review
70
The Irish TimesTara BradyAug 11, 2023
Adri’s gorgeously staged fantasies offer a happy detour that ultimately undermines the film’s emotional gravitas. This remains, nonetheless, a charming coming-of-age portrait with a poignant sense of time and place. Read full review
70
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaMay 11, 2023
In dreams, he imagines himself and his mother as glamorous figures in a monochrome variety-show spectacle, poignant bouts of movie-magic that underscore both Andrew’s innocence and his sharpening intuition: Freedom, for the both of them, will mean upending reality itself. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 2, 2023
Everything in L’Immensità is beautiful even when everything wasn’t: Crialese’s odd, affecting memory piece layers the world as it was, is and could be in the same gilded frame. Read full review
70
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 2, 2023
The force of Cruz’s charisma — she’s like a cross between Sophia Loren and a solar flare — is more than enough to justify spending time with the family. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 28, 2023
I don’t think L’Immensità quite encompasses what it’s straining for and I’m not sure that Penélope Cruz is directed towards her greatest strengths, very good though of course she always is. But Crialese has fervency and style and those fantasy worlds might even have a touch of De Sica’s miraculous Milan. Read full review
42
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossApr 28, 2023
As it is, the enormity of these feelings is trapped, lingering unexplored with nowhere to go, and the frustration felt as a viewer eventually gives way to disengagement. Read full review
40
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsAug 14, 2023
It feels as if Crialese wants to explore this subject matter without potentially alienating an audience who may disagree with the stance it takes, so everything political is soft edged, and Adri’s dilemma is nudged to the background in the film’s final act. Read full review
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