A striking portrait of a woman of certain means as equally weighted down by her expectations and limited control.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2019

A Woman's Life is a beautiful, bittersweet reminder of the most euphoric and most heartwrenching parts of life.

| Sep 11, 2019

Perhaps not literally, but in Stephane Brize's depressing A Woman's Life, there are fleeting moments here and there of feeling and situations that all women can emphasize with.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 19, 2019

A textured film that may just be too dour for its own good.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2019

The significance of some recurring images...only crystalizes as events unfold. The accumulated detail of the period recreation feels uncomfortably authentic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2018

The narrative is suffused with subtle yet piquant moral commentary.

| Aug 8, 2018

A Woman's Life poses an interesting question: can a film be forgiven for being dreary and plodding if it is trying to accurately depict an existence defined by these adjectives?

| Jan 22, 2018

The movie's all-round realism -- bolstered as it is by Judith Chemla's excellent lead performance and Stéphane Brizé's intimate direction -- is deeply absorbing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2018

Brize's film is poetic, elegant and drifts dreamily through its melancholy story with wonderful sleight of hand, helped by the brilliant acting of Judith Chelma, who quivers with suppressed emotions as she stoically endures her lot.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 15, 2018

A Woman's Life is a very human story, told in a stylistically surprising way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 12, 2018

What saves this from being a dull downer is the lightness of touch in the direction and performances, the spontaneity of the dialogue as characters discuss dress designs or household expenditure.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2018

A respectful adaptation, yet one that fails to translate the intensity of Maupassant's writing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2018

The director Stéphane Brizé does some lovely work with non-chronological flashbacks and flash-forwards, but the deadening sense that we know exactly where this is going (hint: not up) is never quite undone.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2018

Whirlwind is something of a watchword for this inventive melodrama, which condenses into some 27 years into two hours, using daringly succinct, precise scenes, brilliantly spliced by editor Anne Klotz.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 11, 2018

A Fascinating period drama, made with a deft hand and an assured style. Beautifully made with some the impeccable lead performances.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 11, 2018

It doesn't make for cheerful viewing but, in its own downbeat way, A Woman's Life makes absorbing filmmaking.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2018

It's marvellously done, with mournful aquatint colours, spare music (on what sounds like a spinet) and elliptical tableaux that keep you creatively guessing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Credit to Stéphane Brizé for an impressive piece of filmmaking with a refreshingly contemporary approach.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Complex, poised and beguilingly earthy. Stephane Brizé's decade-spanning epic is a sensitively performed, memorably fragmentary look at one woman undone by the feckless men in her life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 9, 2018

There's poignancy too, thanks to Brize's build-up of telling details and Chemla's subtle turn.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 9, 2018