Still Life 2013

Sara Stewart, New York Post: Pasolini has a gem in Marsan, a virtuoso actor who plays the role delicately where another might have laid on the pathos too thick. Read more

Barbara VanDenburgh, Arizona Republic: A soulful if obvious meditation on lives lived unshared, and one man's dedication to righting those wrongs while neglecting his own life. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: This mopey British drama (2013) trades in easy ironies and self-satisfied humanism, throwing in a little ugly-duckling romance. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Marsan's technical precision as an actor is formidable, and he's wonderful to watch. But when the material's synthetic, as it is here, you wish Marsan could bust loose at the expense of the movie's obsessively orderly nature. Read more

Joe McGovern, Entertainment Weekly: It's so pillow-smothered by tedium that even the uplift of magic realism in the film's final shot seems cold and stiff. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: The fragile film's bid for poignancy is so aggressive and its sensitivity so studied that it eventually drowns in syrupy banality. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: As a film, it's not viciously bad, but it's dull. Worse, there's a ludicrous ending designed to elicit an emotional reaction. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: You may scold yourself for investing any emotion at all in hokum that even Mr. Marsan, for all his kindly gravity, can't begin to salvage. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Still Life constantly threatens to become a better movie ... Read more

Jonathan Kiefer, Village Voice: When it's all over, Still Life feels disembodied and perfunctory, like a very respectful eulogy for no one in particular. Read more