An idiosyncratic deadpan failure to launch comedy. . . made me laugh harder than anything I have seen the whole year.

| Feb 13, 2024

"Amanda" does a lot of things well but without feeling remarkable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 6, 2023

An assured debut.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 22, 2023

I wished at times Amanda would lighten up a bit; it’s stylish, but the humor is of an affectedly deadpan type that wears a bit thin over 90-odd minutes’ course. Still, it’s a confident debut that promises Cavalli’s future work will be worth watching.

| Aug 11, 2023

A solid entry into the slacker-cinema canon, photographed in a throwback palette of Instagram golden hour, otherwise known as “Wes Anderson filter.

| Aug 11, 2023

For her debut feature, Cavalli’s character study of a sardonic protagonist offers a unique voice to coming-of-age anxiety.

| Aug 11, 2023

Amanda never lets its guard down or soft-pedals its protagonist’s preoccupation with herself, even as it slyly lampoons the culture and society that not only creates but enables rich characters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 2, 2023

The characters’ inscrutability is unrewarding, but the film’s oddness does have energy and wit.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2023

Amanda is a quirky dark comedy that isn't going to appeal to the masses. However, it's an interesting character study of how anti-social people try to make personal connections with each other when they are pressured into it.

| Jul 22, 2023

I got very impatient with this film, but the one thing that holds your attention is Benedetta Porcaroli. She's astounding, and she makes you like it better than you should.

| Jul 21, 2023

I hated it... I had not a second of sympathy for either of these people.

| Jul 21, 2023

The performances—especially those of the two leads—are pitch-perfect, Porcaroli and Bellugi conveying simultaneous indifference and vulnerability.

| Jul 21, 2023

Carolina Cavalli paints a charming picture of a charmless heroine in this confidently quirky debut.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 18, 2023

Amanda’s conundrum and her own refusal to grow, develop, and seek adulthood epitomises privileged white people’s problems, but a genuine pathos underlies the loneliness.

| Jul 12, 2023

Friendship, for the titular Amanda, is an unsolvable riddle attached to a time bomb.

| Jul 11, 2023

The film is an absurdist coming-of-age story that is reminiscent of something Lanthimos or Baumbach might have put together but remains completely Cavalli.

| Jul 10, 2023

Writer/director Carolina Cavalli presents everything you ever wanted to know about human isolation in Amanda, the blackly comic story of one Gen-Z misfit.

| Jul 10, 2023

Cavalli has created her own unique beast, one whose peculiar tics and rhythms signal a distinct artistic voice, even as the end result is far from perfect.

| Jul 9, 2023

It’s in the pointed care the director puts in every bizarre interaction that the film finds its footing.

| Jul 7, 2023

The story may be presented in a quirky way, with a highly distinctive visual style, but it’s well observed and relatable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 7, 2023