On Chesil Beach
Bleecker Street Media | Release Date: May 18, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
15
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
VarietyOwen Gleiberman
It’s a lyrical and rapturous film — a repressed passion play, funny, delicate and heartbreaking. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMay 17, 2018
On Chesil Beach is a beautifully made film that is as difficult to write about as it is to watch, and it is inescapably hard to watch. Yet the reasons it is difficult — a completely heartbreaking story brought to exquisite life via immaculate writing, directing and acting — are why it's worth putting up with the pain. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Mark MedleyMay 17, 2018
The lead actors are both marvellous.... Yet the film’s most impressive performance might come from director Dominic Cooke, who has delivered an assured, wistful debut. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared Mobarak
Its authentic depiction of unprepared young love is delicately innocent. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 16, 2018
Onscreen, On Chesil Beach loses some intensity at the end, as the supple suggestiveness of Mr. McEwan’s prose is replaced by the stagy literalness of film. Perhaps this couldn’t be avoided. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 23, 2018
On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTom RussoMay 23, 2018
Veteran London theater director Dominic Cooke (the BBC’s “The Hollow Crown”) and acclaimed novelist Ian McEwan adapt the fractured-narrative feature from McEwan’s book, enhancing the elegant prose with additional bits of rich characterization and handsomely shot scenery. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattMay 18, 2018
Director Dominic Cooke is mostly known for his Olivier Award-winning theater work, but Chesil never feels stagey or static. It’s beautifully shot, and he pulls lovely performances from both his leads. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubVikram MurthiMay 15, 2018
On Chesil Beach is a minor story by design, one that uses a lovers’ quarrel to interrogate evolving social values, but sometimes it’s the most minor stories that contain some of the most overlooked ideas. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenMay 15, 2018
The film’s imaginative daring springs from its willingness to render repression sexy, even if it will prove to be the seed of a young couple’s dissolution. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 24, 2018
On Chesil Beach, Dominic Cooke’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestseller, features a couple of outstanding performances, but you have to suffer through some serious heartbreak to enjoy them. If “enjoy” is even the word. This is seriously depressing stuff. But good! Really. Don’t let the downbeat vibe scare you off. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah Young
This film of delicate emotional nuance recounts an enchanting but sad love story. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 31, 2018
Quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd so adroitly observed, is the English way, and Ian McEwan's 2007 Booker short-listed novel On Chesil Beach is a soft-spoken but devastating reminder of that truth. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 14, 2018
The movie before it is rather undone by the third act that ends it. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshMay 31, 2018
Ronan and Howle are tremendous in their performances, especially in the way they physically inhabit the characters, transforming from free and unabashed to tense and closed. The bedroom drama, which is almost theatrical in its setting, is riveting thanks to these two actors, and makes the film worthy of regard. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedMay 18, 2018
You watch the movie like you read a book, which leads to eventual tedium. You can’t put a bookmark in a movie, come back later, and pick up where you left off. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 16, 2018
She's glorious, as she always is. But even Ronan can't totally cut through the academic stuffiness that comes with this posh literary adaptation. Read full review
60
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 19, 2018
A movie can and should stand on its own, of course, but it still needs to find a way to give weight and scope to this intimate miniature. And while Dominic Cooke’s film succeeds at much of what it attempts, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a dimension missing. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 17, 2018
The film ends with a syrupy coda that betrays its earlier subtlety. But Ronan and Howle are the keepers of its true spirit. Read full review
60
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 17, 2018
It’s not a bad movie, by any means, but it strains to turn a seriously introspective story into something cinematic. Read full review
60
EmpireLiz BeardsworthMay 14, 2018
An opulent, well crafted and acted tale of emotional repression that captures the head more than the heart. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamMay 14, 2018
A decent adaptation of McEwan’s excellent novella. Forget Fifty Shades – this is sex to make your cheeks blush. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
It is a tender and valuable film, well acted, with a shrewd eye for how naive you can be in your early 20s, how impatient, how pompous, how tragicomically un-self-aware. Read full review
58
IndieWireKate Erbland
On Chesil Beach offers up so many tricky tonal changes, enough that Cooke eventually gives them over to a single note: limp. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 31, 2018
On more than one occasion, this looks and feels like a parody. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 24, 2018
The ending is very different from the novella, and I was surprised at its shameless, ruthless emotional effectiveness. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 23, 2018
As entertainment, On Chesil Beach isn’t remotely satisfying, but it does deserve credit for being weird. Read full review
50
The PlaylistKevin Jagernauth
On Chesil Beach makes us consider the lives of the Florence and Edward as outside observers, but rarely takes us inside the complicated mix of desire and fear this pair is trying to untangle. Read full review
50
Screen DailyWendy Ide
Even with author Ian McEwan adapting his own novel for the screen, this somewhat stilted picture struggles to convey the deft emotional complexity of the source material. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 18, 2018
Unfortunately McEwan, adapting his own work, and first-time director Dominic Cooke, have a hard time rendering the touchy, interior subject matter cinematic; a potentially promising story of an emotional and physical impasse is flattened so much as to be offensive. Read full review
40
CineVueNick HiltonMay 17, 2018
Put simply, the adaptation doesn’t work and the movie is instantly forgettable. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 17, 2018
On Chesil Beach is a non-disaster, essentially, until it falls off a cliff. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMay 18, 2018
The movie is fairly faithful to the book, and yet so much is lost in the transfer. Read full review
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