Brougher films with a sharp-eyed, vulnerable, yet combative sense of symbolism that nonetheless sticks close to the drama's physical specifics.

| Mar 28, 2021

Thought-provoking and mesmerising.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 21, 2007

The acting is uniformly on a high level. Tamblyn is impressive, and Swinton, as usual, is outstanding.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 22, 2007

You are likely to be discussing this film long into the night.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007

Apart from Swinton's fine performance, what largely distinguishes this is Brougher's sharp narrative focus.

| Jun 1, 2007

A movie that can wound you.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2007

Tamblyn's surprisingly measured performance commands attention.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 11, 2007

To see Tamblyn's work here, to see her character almost simultaneously embody pain, terror, anguish, embarrassment, regret and just about any emotion you can think of, is to watch the kind of acting the medium exists to provide.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 27, 2007

[Director Braugher] does get at something rarely broached in movies: The abject fear that some women experience regarding their impending childbirth. The fear is not an existential one, it's basic -- a fear of physical pain.

| Original Score: B | Apr 27, 2007

With a calmness that bespeaks confidence, this small, spellbinding second feature by Hilary Brougher brings together two women, trapped in separate states of denial and distress, who manage to end each other's entrapment.

| Apr 26, 2007

Most persuasive as a realist family drama made by a writer-director whose forte is the accretion of quotidian detail that, as much as any crisis, tells us who her characters are.

Full Review | Apr 26, 2007

For all Brougher's smart choices, her film is frequently compromised by too much tidiness.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Apr 21, 2007

The movie amounts to an extended short story that progresses slowly and fades away with key questions unanswered. Ambiguity isn't necessarily interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 20, 2007

A subject that could easily devolve into malaise-of-the-week 온라인카지노추천 fodder is treated with all the complexity it is due.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2007

Without standing on a soapbox Stephanie Daley suggests a tragic gender gap between men who judge and women who feel.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 20, 2007

Brougher's film would seem more like the drudge work of a lot of made-for-온라인카지노추천 melodramas if it weren't for its plausibly raw suburban atmosphere and the zone of intimacy established by both co-producer Swinton and, especially, Tamblyn.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 19, 2007

A major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.

| Apr 19, 2007

This lacerating drama from writer-director Hilary Brougher shines a piercing light onto some of the hidden terrors of women, especially in an era when abstinence can shade into ignorance.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 18, 2007

There's an unpretentious complexity to Brougher's paralleling of Stephanie and Lydia's private lives, and though the story is littered with contrivance, the actresses keep things recognizably human.

Full Review | Apr 17, 2007

Tells a distinctly (sometimes wrenching) feminine tale without making it only relative to Oprah watchers and talk-show bingers.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2007