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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
10
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Feb 13, 2024
Season 1 Review:
As it stands, The New Look is a series that successfully captures the utter horrors of war alongside the beauty of creation. The severity of one only emphasizes the gravity of the other. Together, they make something breathtaking, heartbreaking, and entirely worth watching.
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The IndependentFeb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Accent quibbles aside, though, this series is a beautifully made, nuanced exploration of two creative geniuses whose lives were far from black and white. And it’s certainly proof that fashion isn’t frivolous: it’s deeply woven into some of history’s most significant moments.
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Feb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
She [Binoche] does succeed in making Coco, who is a moral bankrupt, eminently watchable, and Emily Mortimer as Elsa Lombardi—illegitimate child of English royalty, global house guest and, ultimately, a Coco victim—is also first-rate. Likewise Mr. Mendelsohn, a marvelous actor capable of being quite scary (see: "Animal Kingdom") but who makes Dior a character lovable in his anguish. .... This is the story of how creation helped return spirit and life to the world." By the end, you believe it.
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Feb 13, 2024
Season 1 Review:
From the start, Coco and Christian’s arcs diverge so vastly that the two characters are only in the same room twice over ten hour-long episodes. Nevertheless, Kessler keeps their stories in conversation with one another through common themes, wringing intellectual and emotional power from the contrasts between their journeys.
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The Mercury NewsFeb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Both Binoche and Mendelsohn handle their larger-than-life characters with grace, never slipping into caricature mode. Mendelsohn, in particular, gives a tender, calibrated performance, one that’s particularly strong in early scenes involving his attempt to find his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams) during the occupation.
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Feb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
I’m wondering if the material might have been better served with TWO full seasons, with the first focusing on the war years and the second providing a more detailed look at the aftermath, and the respective careers of Chanel and Dior and the houses they built. Still, this is a solid and substantial look at the power of creating hope by making something beautiful in the aftermath of a most horrible time.
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Feb 13, 2024
Season 1 Review:
If it’s a tad too didactic and maudlin at times, such faults are easily overlooked when the overall effect is so stirring, reminding us how much strength is required in living (and creating) according to one’s principles. And, perhaps more importantly, how such superficial things as fashion carry within them entire histories worth unearthing.
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Feb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The series explicitly pits Chanel — and, by extension, her fashion legacy, which remains fuzzy and ill-defined in the show — against Dior (Ben Mendelsohn), who spends much of the series blocked and groping for inspiration while trying to find his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams), a freedom fighter who was captured and sent to a concentration camp. .... The series still offers many unexpectedly strange or tender moments and a lot of history that was, and remains, enormously interesting.
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Feb 15, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The New Look lags and drags. It takes far too long to get its points across. When it finally does, it does so with not enough conviction. Instead of focusing on the fashion, which is in the title (The New Look was the name of Dior’s first collection when he set up his own house), the 10-episode series keeps forgetting what it’s about and reverts to being a Holocaust story.
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The Daily BeastFeb 13, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The New Look’s approach to its subjects’ motivations, desires, and careers is all frustratingly surface-level for such a consequential story. The series struggles to find the balance between gossipy high-fashion drama and war tale, if there is even a sizable middle point to be established between those two stark opposites at all.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Putting aside the historical revisionism for a second, “The New Look” also falters on its own false terms. For a series ostensibly about fashion, little time is actually spent on the designers’ actual work — costume designer Karen Muller Surreau is barely able to take center-stage — and the camerawork is shakier than that used in the “Bourne” films.
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Feb 14, 2024
Season 1 Review:
“The New Look” is somehow reluctant to highlight Chanel’s worst qualities. The result lacks either the moral clarity or the emotional nuance required of this material. Between its lack of a handle on Chanel and lack of attention to her or Dior’s actual gifts, one wonders what “The New Look” wanted to be to begin with.
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Feb 13, 2024
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