Black Butterflies Reviews
Top CriticVan Houten ... gives a strong performance as Jonker, and the cinematography is pleasing, but the script is cliché-ridden and ends on an overly sentimental note.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The movie reminds you of the extent to which poetry has been marginalized as a cultural force since the early 1960s.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Black Butterflies is a dark, moving depiction of the life and death of a brave rebellious, idiosyncratic woman who made significant strides toward changing the world around her and paid a heavy toll for her passion.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Always feels like a life schematically condensed rather than intimately explored.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Art, politics, and craziness conspire to form a rather mechanical melodrama in Black Butterflies...
Paula van der Oest's biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker is conventional yet captivating thanks in large part to a terrific lead performance from Carice van Houten.
The uncompromising power of Ingrid Jonker's poetry runs like a pulsing vein through Black Butterflies, a 1960s-set drama whose several strong points include the angry intensity of Carice van Houten's fearless perf.
