A compelling family melodrama somewhat in the manner of late John Cassavetes or early Robert Altman…the film combines high production values, terrific acting and a distinctively American lyricism in a combination you hardly ever see these days.
Alan, who Mr. Sachs has said was based on his own father, is a great character - passionate, complicated, bursting with life. Those words also describe Mr. Torn's performance.
Investing a lot of time on each corner of his three-sided character piece, director Ira Sachs (who co-wrote the film with Michael Rohatyn) has created a film as dramatically intense as it is opaque.
80
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
This is still powerful, undiluted stuff -- a jolt of backwoods moonshine whiskey injected into the veins of the atrophied American relationship drama.
Sachs has pulled off a film of inferences and intimations, thanks largely to the casting of accomplished actors.
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
New York PostLou Lumenick
Rip Torn gives his best performance in years.
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A muted but nicely observed study of a Russian woman's gradual estrangement from her domineering Memphis music-legend husband.
60
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
It's Korzun's film, and she is in complete control of her character, never divulging too much of the haunted woman under the studied facade of American hotsiness.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
A drab, minor-key melodrama.
40
Film Threat
Film Threat
Repetitive interaction between characters in an aimless story can't hold up the film's weight, and it eventually collapses on its noble attempt to capture life's frustrations and compromises.