It’s difficult to explain what exactly held me back from liking this film more, but while Clara’s connection to her surroundings and her pursuit of clarity was reasonably expressed, I had a hard time connecting to all of it myself.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2024

“Coming-of-age” isn’t usually a genre applied to stories about forty-year-old women, but Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Clara Sola embraces the challenge with an intimate portrait of a sometimes difficult protagonist with a dash of magical realism.

| Jul 28, 2024

Clara Sola shows what happens when enough finally becomes enough. A breaking point decades in the making over something that never should have been taken from Clara in the first place: her autonomy.

| Feb 25, 2024

Director-cowriter Natalie Alvarez Mesen takes a sharply observant approach, along the way finding wider insight into the ways outsiders struggle to find their voice.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 15, 2023

Unfortunately, Clara Sola’s connections to Carrie bring it down a notch as it heads toward a familiar conclusion.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén portrays a world that it's oppressive and suffocating despite unfolding in open spaces with fresh and green lushness, a relatable scenario for many people in many places in Latin America. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 4, 2023

Clara Sola is invested in the horizontal relationship between humans, nature, and animals, all of which deserve attentive, affective close-ups and equally long takes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 13, 2023

Chinchilla gives an unashamed and almost voiceless performance in which madness and despair come together in an unruly way.

| Mar 8, 2023

This atmospheric debut from Costa Rican-Swedish director Nathalie Álvarez Mesén combines mud, moss and mysticism to arresting effect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2022

In the end, the metaphor gets in the way of the emotion.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2022

Clara Sola is superbly filmed and composed with a very humid sense of atmosphere, and Araya’s performance is a miracle of sympathy and candour.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 15, 2022

Moving between the physical and spiritual worlds with delicacy, Clara Sola is a powerful and poetic story about the devastating consequences of living in an oppressive society. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 5, 2022

Wendy Chinchilla Araya delivers a terrific and nuanced performance while director Nathalie Álvarez Mesén and co-writer Maria Camila Arias, create an engrossing story that never abandons the mysticism aspect.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2022

Other than sex-positive, Clara Sola defies easy labels and comparisons. It’s a quiet film that is both violent and curative. Strong in its perspective, it holds space and grace for those with differing views even as it exposes the error of their ways.

| Aug 12, 2022

Clara Sola is a delicate, emotionally intelligent portrait of a woman finding her way in the world.

| Aug 11, 2022

Not everything in it works, or is pointed, but it’s a striking debut.

| Jul 27, 2022

In her topical struggle for liberation from patriarchal control, Clara allows Alvarez to expose systematically repressive patterns, creating a cathartic journey.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 20, 2022

Clara Sola is an intriguing film ripe with symbolism and strong performances.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Jul 20, 2022

It's as gloomy and slow-paced as the life of the movie's title character: a quiet 40-year-old woman who experiences a sexual awakening around the same time as a religious reckoning. The movie's riveting final third makes up for a lot of the sluggishness.

| Jul 16, 2022

Sometimes films like this are so murky and open to interpretation that it's kind of annoying, but I actually found this one really engaging.

| Jul 12, 2022