Quartet

Maggie Smith and Alan Bates successfully personify the cold spirit that Rhys held to be pre-war England, but Adjani manages merely to reduce Marya's fatalism to spinelessness. The direction, intimate yet retaining a sense of distance, is true both to Rhys and to Ivory. Read full review

Like their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]

Director James Ivory takes his usual aloofly observant distance and the film's love triangle loses some drastic impetus. Read full review

Ivory's dispassionate direction precludes real involvement with the characters, resulting in a peculiarly austere depiction of a colorful era. Read full review