Under The Sand lifts the phantom-spouse syndrome to the level of art, yet another dimension for this popular form.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2002

... this picture demands (and rewards) close study ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2001

It crawls under the skin by placing you firmly in the shoes of the mourner.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2001

Ozon ... displays a rare talent for being able to reveal life's interiority in unusually palpable terms.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2001

It's hard even to describe the movie without making it sound trite. Rather, by showing behavior, the film gets at the emotional truth that underlies it.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2001

Both of these Ozon films can do what few directors have mastered. They can make us feel exactly what the director intends, without overt or obvious cues.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2001

Ozon shoots it all with such haunting economy and breathless intimacy, and Rampling acts it with such candor and recklessness, that the film keeps lingering in your mind after you see it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 9, 2001

An absorbing, visually poetic portrait of one woman's subconscious refusal to come to grips with loss and grief.

| Aug 3, 2001

As the film exposes the haunted frailty beneath bourgeois exteriors, Under the Sand marks the advance of Ozon from promising auteur to artful interpreter of the human condition.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2001

Overall, Sand is alive to the senses.

| Jul 6, 2001

Each of the elements in Under the Sand is beautifully integrated and each in support of what is essentially an extended aria of loss and devotion.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 25, 2001

A delicate and devastating film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 24, 2001

Performed so straightforwardly, so seriously, and its characters are shown to be so intelligent, that it never seems a freakish supernatural tale.

Full Review | May 23, 2001

Astute and penetrating.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 21, 2001

Rampling is superb as a woman pushed to the edge of madness by grief.

Full Review | May 14, 2001

Charlotte Rampling continues to reinvent sexual desire.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 6, 2001

Rampling shows a veteran's craftsmanship in evoking her patented compound of icy reserve and skittish disquietude.

| May 4, 2001

Ozon gives the movie to Ms. Rampling, whose performance is like a perfectly executed piano étude.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 4, 2001

A sensitive and subtle meditation on aging, loss and bereavement.

Full Review | May 4, 2001