The Comfort of Strangers

Cannon Film Distributors | Release Date: April 1, 1991

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

61	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

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Vincent Canby

Mr. Schrader is a director of great rigor and discipline. The movie is fascinated by the baroque behavior it observes, but without imitating it. Read full review

Peter Travers

Director Paul Schrader has fashioned a film of surpassing creepiness. It's pretentious, too, and sometimes maddeningly dull. But the erotically unsettling atmosphere – exquisitely rendered by cinematographer Dante Spinotti – soon seeps in. Read full review

Hal Hinson

An elegantly wrought bit of nastiness. Read full review

Linda Deutsch

The Comfort of Strangers is a sinister movie, not scary in the sense of a horror film but eerie enough to haunt the deep recesses of your mind long after the operatic music and the lush Italian settings have faded. [02 Apr 1991]

Bill Cosford

Schrader, one of this country's most literate filmmakers, can be a show-off, and there are times in The Comfort of Strangers when we're more aware of style than story -- this piece is impeccably tailored, and it looks awfully good even when it isn't making sense. [17 May 1991, p.G11]

Michael Upchurch

Schrader's lavish technique and his tight ensemble cast just about make the movie work. Comfort isn't the tour de force that Patty Hearst, his last movie, was - but it has an enticing menace and languor to it. [19 Apr 1991, p.24]

Rick Groen

This picture will linger, stuck in those corners of the mind you may not care to visit, where the stranger you meet lies in the bed beside you, or stares back from the mirror before you, and where the comfort offered is nothing but cold. [14 June 1991]

Michael Wilmington

At its best, it's about madness disguised as utter rationalism, utter dispassion, noblesse oblige. As such, in odd moments, it chills through to the bone and beyond. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Harold Pinter's script sometimes suffers from awkward, even implausible dialogue; but careful pacing and casting make for a film that, while directed with cool discretion, is sensual and shocking in its casual evocation of erotic violence, emotional manipulation and moral torpor. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Whatever this movie's about, it's tailor-made for its audience. It's for those who fantasize about steamy afternoons in European hotel rooms. For those who thrive on meaningful (or meaningless) lulls between isolated events. For those who love the weighty (or lightweight) dialogue of screenwriter Harold Pinter. Read full review

Marjorie Baumgarten

Something about The Comfort of Strangers remains aloof, creating a physical and emotional distance between its characters and its audience. Some of that is, no doubt, Pinter's script. But Schrader pinpoints a nucleus of moral decay and then observes it with a detached clinician's eye rather than the eye if a rapt storyteller. Read full review

Roger Ebert

The movie is ultimately not quite successful; when it was over I felt there was some additional payoff or explanation still due. Perhaps the arbitrary, unfinished nature of the story is part of its purpose. But I felt that characters this interesting should not be allowed to remain complete ciphers. Still, in individual moments, The Comfort of Strangers has an eerie, atmospheric charm. Read full review