At a first glance, Teorema seems like a film that would foreground the political...but instead, Pasolini uses the ideas that surround wealthy families as a way to explore silence, sadness and the ways in which people lose touch with their identities...

| Jun 5, 2024

Pasolini frequently uses those who push themselves to the margins of society to expose our collective and individual weaknesses, and our determination to maintain the image of order.

| Jun 29, 2023

The results cast a lingering spell on everyone and the ambiguity is left for interpretation with each character...

| Mar 3, 2023

The trouble with this film is that Pasolini may be trying to do too much all at once. So he has to oversimplify.

| Jan 7, 2021

In a world where Pasolini's taboo shattering may now seem passé, it's still an unsettling venture which examines personal emptiness.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 31, 2020

There are many ways to react towards Teorema, and barring the harassment of cast and crew, none are wrong.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 23, 2020

How you feel about Teorema will be determined largely by how willing you are to apply heavy import and meaning to a vague, potentially silly premise.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 25, 2020

Teorema was targeted by the Vatican, and that's hardly surprising -- in addition to its thematic content, the film features almost as many close-ups of Terence Stamp's crotch as Lawrence of Arabia contains scenes featuring sand.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 29, 2020

Teorema is a great film with something of the mystic despair of Pierrot le Fou... and of the eternal search of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

| Jan 29, 2020

Tedious, jejune, and silly.

| Jan 23, 2020

A very extraordinary piece of work.

| Jul 18, 2018

Arguably Pasolini's most finely wrought work, an allegory bringing together his central preoccupations with politics, sexuality, society, art and the irredeemable inauthenticity of bourgeois life.

| Apr 14, 2013

The film, made in 1968, was provocative then and remains so now. But it doesn't elucidate its ambivalent moral secrets easily.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 12, 2013

It is as if Pasolini has imagined how Italy's bland, complacent, stagnant governing class could be blown wide open: like putting a hundredweight of dynamite in the San Andreas fault.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 11, 2013

Pasolini creates an ethereal mood - and Stamp, smiling ineffably,has never been better.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 9, 2013

Whichever of the various interpretations you ascribe to this socio-political parody, the quality is undeniable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 8, 2013

A heavily symbolic and highly intellectual look at the bourgeois milieu and the effect that a mysterious visitor, Stamp, has on one specific family.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 23, 2007

The narrative, almost silent in the first half, is unusually clear for a film by Pasolini. Performance by all members of the cast are praiseworthy, though Stamp dominates the first half and Betti, the second.

| Oct 23, 2007

You'll either find it brilliant, or maddening. And neither response would be wrong.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 11, 2007

Enthralling.

| Original Score: A+ | Feb 13, 2006