Marguerite's unspeakable voice is counterpointed by cinematographer Glynn Speeckaert's exquisitely composed tableaux. And the denouement yields more than one surprise.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2016

Frot gives Marguerite a grandeur, but also an anxious, lost quality, emphasised by Glynn Speeckaert's cinematography with its heavy shadows and tendency to isolate Frot in the middle of the wide screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 21, 2016

It's a tale of great sadness -- about somebody enchanted by a world she's forever barred from entering.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

Marguerite -- despite its longueurs -- offers much to enjoy, particularly Frot's ripe, passionate performance.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 15, 2016

"Marguerite" is a dark delight, a cringe comedy that skirts tragedy throughout, examining delusion, entitlement, denial and the question of whether the truth is essential.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 8, 2016

Frot's performance, as a woman so caught up in the joy of music that she doesn't quite understand how bad she is, is particularly delightful, and often quite moving.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2016

We laugh during "Marguerite," but we don't laugh at Marguerite, because somehow director and co-writer Xavier Giannoli persuades us to see in her the universal tragedy.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 31, 2016

Marguerite is a powerful film.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 25, 2016

Catherine Frot gives a heartrending performance as the title character, an aging baroness in 1920s Paris who feverishly pursues a classical singing career despite her utter lack of talent.

| Mar 24, 2016

It piles too much on its serving plate, and at 129 minutes it's definitely overlong. But it has Frot, an actress with the wise, patient eyes of a cat, and she invests Marguerite with the multiple meanings the rest of the film elegantly fumbles.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 24, 2016

In the end, the movie gives voice not just to Marguerite's deficiencies as a singer but also to emotional frailties that are too human and familiar.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2016

"Marguerite" achieves what the protagonist herself never managed: perfect pitch.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 24, 2016

Frot's performance is so towering, so convincing, that it smooths out all the film's rough edges. It's a triumph.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2016

The film is a little long; a couple of subplots could be shed with no problem. But "Marguerite" is a shining star, a film that will set you laughing and thinking in equal measure.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 24, 2016

Giannoli and Frot ensure that Marguerite is never the butt of the joke. On the contrary, she embodies something admirably unruly - a devotion to music that transcends the stifling disappointments of real life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 20, 2016

Marguerite is a handsomely shot period affair with all the trimmings. At its core, though, it is a very delicate study of a woman who refuses to accept any of the constraints that her class, gender or lack of talent should place on her.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2016

This film, ably directed by Xavier Giannoli, is also based on the Jenkins story, but has switched the setting from Manhattan to Paris and changed the subject's name to Marguerite Dumont (a top-class turn from Catherine Frot).

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 18, 2016

Marguerite suffers from a storytelling tameness that erodes the power of its subject.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 18, 2016

It's a film that relies on our sympathy for her and she flawlessly commands it, without ever resorting to sentimentality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 17, 2016

It has the dramatic density, social sweep and sardonic bite of great French fiction. Think Balzac, Maupassant.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 17, 2016