Laurence Anyways Reviews

For every sublime moment the movie has to offer, there's a cinematic dead zone of indulgence that wipes it away, generating a frustrating, occasionally intolerable sit.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Lushly romantic and daringly original.

Full Review

Rarely have such issues been explored on screen with such intimacy and complexity, even if some of the quirky details in Dolan's epic feels more unfocused than profound.

Full Review

It's all too much, really, including its 21/2-hour-plus running time. But it's also engrossing, an ultimately tender story of a transsexual's transformation over 10 years and its effect on him and the people around him.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Laurence Anyways has the feel of a personal project that got away from Dolan, full of raw, rough-edged drama in desperate need of discipline and refinement.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

One can't help but feel that Dolan & Co. go into a bit too much detail re: the changes faced by Laurence...Nonetheless, there has not been as exhaustive (exhausting?) a look into the Trans(gender) experience before.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

It evidences a hoarder's bond to moments of extravagantly photographed feeling -- no matter that it's often the same feelings being communicated, over and over.

Full Review | Original Score: C

At nearly three hours, it's by turns an extraordinary and exhausting work.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Poupaud's quiet moments convey a lofty, poignant introspection, and Clément erupts with grand, if scattershot, furies.

Full Review

Laurence Anyways, Xavier Dolan's third film, acknowledges the messiness of transgendered life, and the sizeable gaps between tolerance, acceptance, and actually going to bed with someone.

Full Review

Dolan, now on his third film, is confident. He takes his time. The movie is long enough and covers a great enough time span that the word "epic" will be thrown at it.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.8/10

This frequently brilliant epic does more than make us understand the challenges faced by trans people and those who love them - it makes us feel those challenges ourselves.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10

At nearly three hours, it's entirely too long, needlessly padded out with an intrusive interview-framing device.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

[Mr. Dolan] perfectly evokes the violating effect of a stranger's scrutiny and the imponderable depths of a lover's gaze.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Laurence Anyways contains a voice so pronounced, and so specific, that Dolan is going to be one to watch for years to come.

Full Review | Original Score: B

For all of its transgender drama, "Laurence Anyways" remains a love story, pure but not so simple.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Without belittling the challenges and prejudices Laurence faces, Dolan places her story into larger contexts, posing questions about conformity, heartbreak, love and self-fulfillment.

Full Review

Xavier Dolan's refreshing and extraordinary achievement here is fiercely telling a grand tale with the most universal of themes (love), and carefully exempting it from victimization while not avoiding the social issues that surround it.

Full Review

A nearly three-hour epic, a melodrama writ large, and blessed with a young man's ambition.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

Forgive this film its marvelous moodiness-someone needs to go there once in a while.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5