Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido) Reviews
Top Critic
As visually captivating as it is emotionally engaging.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The film's sophistication -- and it is an immensely sophisticated film -- lies in its refusal to tuck in too tightly its shirttails.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Burman explored this world before in 2000's Waiting for the Messiah, but in Lost Embrace, his maturity results in a much tighter and engaging film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Burman succeeds in involving us with the kind of characters who don't normally find their way to the big screen.
| Original Score: B
A beautifully crafted film. Full of intriguing tracking shots, broken into vignettes introduced with lyrical titles, it has a willfully patient pace.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The wit with which Burman casts an almost Shakespearean longing for purpose and direction against the tiny confines of a seedy mall is adroit and inspired.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Were it a book, it would go somewhere on the shelf with Jonathan Safran Foer and early Philip Roth. It also possesses traces of early Jean-Luc Godard and his wit with characters, as well as some of Wes Anderson's random silliness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Burman's use of handheld camera and his editing convey the messiness of life in the mall's large extended family, but he never allows the hurly-burly of the setting to overwhelm Ariel's story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
One of those foreign pictures that steeps us in a milieu so dense, yet so convincing, that we wind up believing and being beguiled by all its people and places.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's a film of unexpected, almost indescribable off-center charm that deepens as it goes on.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Some will find it charming, others, exhausting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
An intimate, affectionate portrait of one tiny pocket of the world.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The tedious film might have been worth watching if Burman had given reasons to care about Ariel or anyone else. He doesn't and we don't.
| Original Score: 2/4
A small movie about a small world, but its modesty is part of what makes it durable and satisfying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Tilts toward preciousness but is rescued from its sentimental impulses by Hendler, whose captivating deadpan belies Ariel's abiding affection for the very people he can't wait to escape.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's 20 minutes too long -- forgivable in view of Burman's affection for his material.
A general lack of drama, a low-budget docu feel and an ultraslim storyline are more than compensated for by a sterling script and perfs.
