Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine Reviews
Top Critic
An investment that has paid off by producing an unexpectedly lyrical and poetic portrait.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/6
Film4
Marion Cajori makes a brave attempt to grapple with a subject who resists explanation; while she may not always succeed, the journey is frequently illuminating.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The film stands alone as a remarkable achievement, as intimate a portrayal of a living artist as one could ask for. And a likeable one at that.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Boxoffice Magazine
One sonorous waltz through an enchanted domain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Remembrances by aides and relatives plus antique photos and close-ups of her work -- including her iconic giant spiders -- round out the loving film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
AV Club
Louise Bourgeois is absorbing, largely because of Bourgeois' striking art, prickly personality, and assured intensity.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Filmmakers Marion Cajori (who died in 2006) and Amei Wallach are smart enough to grant us just the right amount of access to the great artist's full range of emotions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/6
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Art world iconoclast, feminist icon, cranky old Frenchwoman with a sharp tongue and a gothic family history: Artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois is all these things and more.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Film Journal International
For the sophisticated viewer, it is like looking at Bourgeois' work in the company of a good friend.
This uncommonly elegant and evocative portrait of Louise Bourgeois reveals much about the haunting and haunted master while leaving intact the thing you cannot explain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
The artist's festering recollections of her girlhood mesh with guided first-person tours of her sculptures, creating a privileged look into a psyche rendered solid.
This complex, utterly fascinating docu evolves in almost as varied and unpredictable ways as has its 96-year-old subject, famed sculptress Louise Bourgeois.
Remarkably and unsentimentally self-reflective, the artist talks to filmmakers Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach about a lifetime of tough work and tougher questions. Fascinating stuff.
Guardian [UK]
Despite Bourgeois's on-camera effusiveness, this film suffers a little from curtailing much background information; but fans of Bourgeois as a personality will find a lot to like here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Slant Magazine
Frequently roving around and taking awe at Bourgeois's massive artwork, the filmmakers may understand the artist as a woman and a living creature but they often treat her as if she herself were a museum piece.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
