| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 24, 2011

It is a story told in small moments, the camera close-up on a look, the stroke of a hand, the way a blonde thread is revealed in a husband's jacket.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2006

Anyone shopping by the ton for melodrama is well advised to browse the ample display on view in this cinematic square.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 19, 2006

Rich in perceptive details, Albou's film has drawn favorable comparison to the work of Claire Denis (The Intruder, Friday Night), and both directors share a sensual sensitivity to their characters' inner lives.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 12, 2006

The grand ideas are effectively integrated into a drama that relies equally upon the head, the heart and the body for inspiration.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 6, 2006

It's very well-acted and directed, shot with great vigor, mostly in roaming closeups that plunge us right into the thick of things.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2006

[If the film] is a story of escape and liberation, it also shows a calibrated respect for tradition and the ancient pull of family loyalty.

Full Review | May 4, 2006

It evaporates from your mind even while watching it.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2006

In their separate ways, Laura and Mathilde have discovered how to shape their own destinies in a turbulent period of clashing civilizations.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

It would be hard to imagine a filmmaking style as serious yet lazy as the earnest vrit bobbing and weaving employed by La Petite Jrusalem.

| Original Score: C | Feb 1, 2006

Albou's chosen a touchy subject, which she treats sensitively. Her mature script is complemented by heartfelt turns by Fanny Valette as Laura and Elsa Zylberstein as Mathilde.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Centered on people of limited means, pic intelligently explores the ways in which the demands of a tightly knit religious community can be stifling or liberating depending on one's own temperament.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2006

With candor, sympathy and excellent cinematography, La Petite Jerusalem reflects on the bodies of two sisters in Sarcelles, a drab Parisian suburb called home by an enclave of Orthodox Jewish immigrants.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 26, 2006

... strains under the influence of too many philosophy texts ...

| Jan 25, 2006

[A] respectable portrait of inhibiting zealotry.

| Original Score: B | Dec 29, 2005

Somber and nuanced but prone to self-annotation.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 16, 2005