65
Metascore
21 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySome of the most acute pleasures here are in the doctor-patient exchanges, depicting with a rigorous absence of fuss or sentiment a relationship that's as much intimate as professional.
- 70Screen DailyLee MarshallScreen DailyLee MarshallIf the intimate frame and dour, matter-of-fact aesthetic suggest a return to the raw territory of La Promesse or The Son, what is new here is a flirtation with genre that lends an extra dose of resonance to a finely-scripted story.
- 70VarietyGuy LodgeVarietyGuy LodgeThough what we get is largely exemplary: a simple but urgent objective threaded with needling observations of social imbalance, a camera that gazes with steady intent into story-bearing faces, and an especially riveting example of one in their gifted, toughly tranquil leading lady Adèle Haenel. What’s missing...is any great sense of narrative or emotional surprise.
- 67The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangThe somewhat drab aesthetic and almost vanishingly understated performance style dull the potential pleasures of a good old-fashioned whodunnit to roughly the luminosity of an above-average feature-length episode of a TV procedural.
- 60Time Out LondonDave CalhounTime Out LondonDave CalhounSome clunky coincidences and unlikely events confuse the film's mission, and it lacks the clarity and parable-like meaning of the brothers' best films.
- 58The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaThe Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaEven the cinematography by the Dardennes’ long-time collaborator Alain Marcoen, usually so instrumental in ensnaring the viewer within their films’ ethical quandaries, is surprisingly flat this time around.
- 40CineVueJohn BleasdaleCineVueJohn BleasdaleA run-of-the-mill, plodding drama, the 'social realism' of which never feels particularly real.
- 40The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe Unknown Woman is an odd, dramatically stilted and passionless quasi-procedural concerning a mysterious death; it depends on a series of unconvincing, and in fact borderline-preposterous, encounters and features a bafflingly inert performance from Adèle Haenel, whose usual spark appears to have been doused by self-consciousness.