As an actor-turned-director Portman aims high, taking chances and never allowing the weight of the material to bog down the film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2021

When all is said and done, this extremely personal project from one of our most talented screen artists is both admirable and ambitious.

| Mar 31, 2020

Ultimately, this is a worthy, heartfelt, and uneven attempt to bring to cinematic life an immense, acclaimed memoir of love, life, and war.

| Mar 24, 2020

I recommend the film not because it's a classic or it's my new favorite movie. But...It's worth disappearing into an old, old language and confronting difficult truths about life.

| Oct 11, 2019

Natalie Portman's love letter to Israel may be more dark than it is loving, but it's a visceral experience and an amiable directorial debut for Portman.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 30, 2019

The birth of Israel is so much more than a setting here -- it is the existential reality that shapes the characters.

| Oct 17, 2018

A Tale of Love and Darkness isn't a great film, but a respectable and commendable one that shows a lot of promise for the continued evolution of Portman's career.

| Aug 28, 2018

It is an interesting choice for a filmmaker's debut... However, after watching, it seems like no one else could have pulled off this striking balance between romance and melancholy as well as Portman.

| Aug 6, 2018

It's difficult to criticize this film without calling for an entirely different one... but I'll give Portman's film the credit for letting one imagine how differently it could have turned out.

| Feb 14, 2018

A dreary downer.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 13, 2017

A Tale of Love and Darkness is a sincere, heartfelt, and enormously emotionally impactful viewing experience, and is one of my favorite films released in 2016.

| Feb 13, 2017

A solid historical drama that shows Portman's talent to get behind the camera after years of dazzling us in front of it. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 24, 2017

While the film doesn't soar, it's an honorable labor of love that's surely one of the most unusual features ever made by an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress.

| Dec 14, 2016

Portman's conviction in the material oozes from this deeply poetic debut.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2016

Natalie Portman's first directed film turned into a beautiful piece of art, honoring a brilliant memoir and important time in history.

| Oct 5, 2016

A Tale of Love and Darkness maps the chaos of the founding of the modern Jewish state onto the dissolution of this family.

| Sep 27, 2016

Though the tone is sometimes gloomy and nostalgic, Portman pours her heart into every moment, showing her devotion to Oz and to Israel, the country of her birth.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 15, 2016

Portman's biopic of Israeli writer is earnest, ethereal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2016

Portman's ability to convey this rich borscht of people, place, and inescapable history is flavourful indeed. So it's unfortunate that, while getting so many difficult things right, she makes an almost equal number of missteps on the easy stuff.

| Sep 2, 2016

Whereas Oz's material, at its best, considers the nuances and subtleties of language, Portman's script reduces his writing to platitudes and cliches.

| Sep 1, 2016