Partisan combines an inventive story, exquisite cinematography, a wonderful 80s-style electro soundtrack ... and perhaps most of all, provides a space for the greatest performance of Vincent Cassel's career.

| Aug 25, 2018

Kleiman's Dogtooth-esque dark drama paints a weird and disturbing portrait of stolen innocence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2016

Kleiman has an eye for poetic imagery but the storytelling style is so oblique and dour that this is a jarring and difficult film to watch.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 8, 2016

Oddly underpowered, anticlimactic and torpidly acted ...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 7, 2016

There's some decent technical stuff here, but the story's a big ol' bust.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 7, 2016

A film trying so hard to upend expectations that it loses itself in the process.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 6, 2016

Jeremy Chabriel is arresting as the increasingly uneasy youngster, and director and co-writer Ariel Kleiman proves adept at both world-building and attention-focusing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2015

It's hard to tell if director and co-writer Ariel Kleiman is being serious or sarcastic with a story this preposterous.

| Oct 4, 2015

A moody drama that employs a dystopian-type premise that is not too far afield from a typical young-adult book series although with loftier aspirations and a less propulsive pace.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 2, 2015

Usually, partisans stand for something, but in this movie, which is stripped of a specific time frame and relevant geopolitical context, the term becomes hollow.

| Oct 1, 2015

Newcomer Jeremy Chabriel commands as 11-year-old Alexander, a chosen son whose dawning sense of right and wrong challenges the social order. An auspicious beginning, for him and Kleiman.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2015

Ambiguity proves the undoing of a potentially interesting story in "Partisan," the first feature by Australian filmmaker Ariel Kleiman.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 1, 2015

Maddeningly vague.

| Oct 1, 2015

This intimate drama is highlighted by strong performances from Vincent Cassel and newcomer Jeremy Chabriel. "Partisan" may not delve deeply enough into its fascinating milieu, but the threat of violence lingers over the film like a dark cloud.

Full Review | Oct 1, 2015

Partisan is too obscure to appeal even to American arthouse crowds. It's too obscure and uneventful, ultimately, for its own good.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 1, 2015

Perhaps it's a date movie for sadists.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Sep 30, 2015

Ariel Kleiman fashions an erotic atmosphere of dusty sensuality that complicates our judgement of this world, but he takes shortcuts.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 29, 2015

Partisan's lack of interest in providing necessary context - especially about the ill-defined larger society that Gregori rejects - leaves it operating on a hazy psychological level.

| Sep 29, 2015

"Partisan" is slow and it is ambiguous but supremely sure of itself, as it moves, with singleminded grace from chilly to all-out chilling.

| Original Score: B | Jul 11, 2015

The script never gets beyond its vague metaphors and an earnest desire to make profound observations about human nature.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 28, 2015