…a real return to form for the writer/director Haifaa Al Mansou, a simple and effective drama that makes a succinct point; why should anyone accept living in a skewed, unfair world when we have the power to make a better one?…

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2024

Seven years after Haifaa al-Mansour filmed Wadjda, the first feature shot entirely in ... Saudi Arabia, she returns with The Perfect Candidate, a movie that demonstrates how much has changed in the Arab country — and how much has stayed the same.

| Jul 29, 2024

With The Perfect Candidate, she has made some rumbles but puts on a perfect platform for the rights of women in such a restrictive country for the modern century.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 1, 2023

[Haifaa Al-Mansour] delivers a razor-sharp look at women's lives in modern Saudi Arabia.

| Aug 6, 2021

Featuring finely-tuned characters and pitched to a degree of outrage that I found completely engaging

| Original Score: 4.5/5.0 | Jun 29, 2021

Al-Mansour has struck gold again with her leading lady. Mila Al Zahrani, who appears in nearly every second of the film, has a strong but elegant screen presence and she makes the heroine an extremely appealing character.

| Jun 26, 2021

[Haifaa al-Mansour's] connection to her home country shows - there's a familiarity to al-Mansour's lens.

| Jun 7, 2021

Even if Al-Mansour plays to an audience she knows is already on her side, The Perfect Candidate is still telling a story that ought to be told.

| Jun 6, 2021

Director Haifaa Al-Mansour once again explores the complexities of being a woman (or girl) in Saudi Arabia through a charmingly direct and confident main character who subverts the status quo.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 2, 2021

Al Mansour, who also co-wrote the script for The Perfect Candidate, depicts the strength of family bonds in reversing the small cruelties Maryam is subject to, at the same time gently taking men to task for their absence and neglect.

| Jun 1, 2021

The Perfect Candidate is a low-key charmer that manages to accomplish something that might seem otherwise impossible these days: it makes you feel slightly -- slightly -- optimistic about the contemporary political process.

| Jun 1, 2021

Snappy soap opera story about female empowerment.

| Original Score: B- | May 26, 2021

The Perfect Candidate could be the second installment to what Wadjda started. It might not be as great as the latter, but it's close.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 22, 2021

It really liked it. It's not a doom and gloom movie -- it's about "how can you use your influence?"

| May 21, 2021

It has an almost comic tone at times. I wouldn't call it a comedy, but it's a very light dramedy.

| May 21, 2021

What I appreciated about this was the subtleties -- she's doing things in small victories.

| May 21, 2021

Mansour gives audiences a candid, often wryly amusing glimpse of life inside the Saudi kingdom, which is so often cloaked in opacity and menace.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2021

The Perfect Candidate lacks a distinct visual grammar ... but as a film that recognizes the giant strides small wins can make for women, it feels significant.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 14, 2021

...the whole film is teeming with life, and al-Mansour balances the restrictions Maryam must daily face with vivid portrayals of the joys of sisterhood and the dynamics of all-female gatherings...

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 14, 2021

The pleasure of the film rests not in the plot, which is so placid as to be anti-dramatic, but in the minutiae; as ever, Al Mansour homes in on the everyday workings of condescension and conformity.

| May 14, 2021