Love Life
Oscilloscope Laboratories | Release Date: August 11, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 17, 2023
It’s a solid, sensitively handled study of the aftermath of a trauma, elevated by tricky, unexpected revelations about Park. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 15, 2023
A gentle, complex film that will pay rewatching. Read full review
50
Little White LiesXuanlin ThamSep 11, 2023
Its final act is composed of such undercooked plot developments that its emotional stakes lose all import. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 28, 2023
Grief is universal, and yet no two stories about it are alike, a distinction that keeps Koji Fukada’s tender drama “Love Life” unpredictable as it mixes the mundane with the inexplicable, and empathy with alienation, to nuanced, if never fully stirring effect. Read full review
80
Film ThreatAlex SavelievAug 24, 2023
It doesn’t talk down to audiences, instead inviting them to experience something relatable, something that both challenges and provides answers. How refreshing. Read full review
50
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergAug 14, 2023
It’s more a grief triangle than a love triangle, and a late revelation alters its symmetry, erasing hard-won sympathy for one character. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMarya E. GatesAug 11, 2023
While there can be an artificiality to monologues, the raw and complex contradictions each character contends with are rooted in emotions that never once ring false, and the actors bring an authenticity that transcends treacle. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 10, 2023
Love Life doesn’t coalesce into anything deeper than “Everybody’s dealing with something” and “Life’s a mess that only gets messier.” And in the end, this quiet drama — stumbling into near comedy for the finale — is just pointless enough to pass for “dull.” Read full review
50
Slant MagazineSteven ScaifeAug 7, 2023
Because we’re tasked with inferring so much about the characters, especially their pasts, so much of the film’s romance is unconvincing. Read full review
70
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 9, 2022
Love Life is handsomely mounted and perceptively observed, with Kimura in particular delivering a persuasively complex performance. Read full review
60
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 9, 2022
Koji Fukada’s Love Life unabashedly embraces melodramatic contrivance in its examination of modern middle-class love tested as much by social prejudices as by personal demons; it just does so with such pallid, polite reserve that its sentimentality never becomes transcendently moving. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 9, 2022
While Love Life has its fair share of sharply written heart-to-hearts, many of its most touching moments (and all of its most telling ones) hinge on a certain kind of emotional geography. Read full review
50
The PlaylistElena LazicSep 9, 2022
A busy web of interpersonal dynamics, Love Life often feels more concerned about its characters’ storylines and the way they all fit into each other than about what the audience might be getting out of watching it all play out. Read full review
75
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanSep 9, 2022
The scale in which Fukada works — as both writer and director — is so deliberately intimate that immense experiences feel microcosmic, while tiny moments make a huge impact. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeSep 9, 2022
Isolation, emotional distance and (mis)communication are all on display in Love Life, though these subjects are approached with a disorienting but welcome lightness, underlining the absurdity of family life. Read full review
83
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 9, 2022
Amongst the stars, Love Life (named for an Akiko Yano song of the same name) is jarringly everyday in color palette and setting, but has just the right amount of scope, filmmaking nous, and unusual choices to hold its own and even stand out. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 9, 2022
Love Life is an inexpressibly tragic and painful human drama about complicated lives, a movie that interleaves the utter desolation with a dry understated comedy and a sense of emotional tangle and chaos, a film that moreover blindsides its leading female character – and us, the audience – with an entirely unexpected coda section. Read full review
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