Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 35
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 7
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 1,799
Love, death, and fish all mingle in this offbeat comedy-drama from award-winning Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Bibiane Champagne (Marie-Josee Croze) is the daughter of a well-known fashion designer who dabbles in modeling when she's not busy helping to run the family business with her brother Phillippe (Bobby Beshro). But Bibiane has not been especially happy in her work lately, owing in part to an unexpected pregnancy that led her to have an abortion. Bibiane tries drowning her sorrows
Sep 15, 2000 Wide
Apr 8, 2003
Arrow Releasing
All Critics (37) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (28) | Rotten (7) | DVD (1)
Strange it is, but delightfully so.
Darkly funny and frequently insightful.
An original little film about one young woman's education.
This is a nervy, risky film, and Villeneuve has inspired Croze to give herself over completely to the tormented persona of Bibi.
Sensual, funny and, in the end, very touching.
Observant intelligence constantly vies with pretension -- and sometimes plain wacky implausibility -- throughout Maelstrom.
Antiseptic and distantly intellectual.
Not too far below the gloss you can still feel director Denis Villeneuve's beating heart and the fondness he has for his characters.
Most fish stories are a little peculiar, but this is one that should be thrown back in the river.
An oddity, to be sure, but one that you might wind up remembering with a degree of affection rather than revulsion.
An oddly affecting and often darkly funny drama about the randomness of life and the possibility of redemption.
The main story ... is compelling enough, but it's difficult to shrug off the annoyance of that chatty fish.
'Sophisticated' viewers who refuse to admit that they don't like it will likely call it 'challenging' to their fellow sophisticates.
Offers the flash of rock videos fused with solid performances and eerie atmosphere.
Maelstrom is strange and compelling, engrossing and different, a moral tale with a twisted sense of humor.
A young woman's life unravels when she has an abortion, then a few days later hits a pedestrian with her car and flees in a panic. MAELSTROM is not for anyone seeking a traditional narrative: it's an arty, surrealistic, impressionistic portrait of guilt, narrated by a fish telling the story with his last breath as he
May 8, 2011
Super Reviewer
Maelström is the brilliantly told story of a young woman dealing with the chaos that ensues from the hit-and-run she committs. I especially enjoyed how it was sometimes shot at different angles with the camera shakiness on top of that to give it a touch of confusion. Like the snowball effect, each event of the film
December 23, 2007Super Reviewer
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