Lore 2012

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Lore, from Australian director Cate Shortland, proceeds like a long-ago fairy tale, dark-hued, grounded in real-life 20th-century horrors. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The film sustains an air of overarching mystery in which the viewer, like the title character, is in the position of a sheltered child plunked into an alien environment and required to fend for herself without a map or compass. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: It's a remarkable accomplishment. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The pace is deliberate, verging on slow-Australian filmmakers aren't keen on short takes or quick cuts-but the content is constantly surprising. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Shot with a detail-oriented expressiveness that occasionally edges into overly precious imagery, Lore excels mostly as a survival film, as Rosendahl barters jewelry and trinkets for whatever food and favors she can collect along the way. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A fiercely poetic portrait of a young woman staggering beyond innocence and denial, it's about the wars that rage within after the wars outside are lost. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Saskia Rosendahl gives an impressively poised performance as the beautiful teenager, whose determination to protect her remaining family coincides with her growing revulsion toward her parents. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Saskia Rosendahl is a highly expressive actress within the limited confines of her character, and the film is studded with memorable scenes. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: "Lore" is not a pretty story, but it is a good and sadly believable one. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: This striking, slow-building drama ... uses fractured, impressionistic imagery as a mirror of moral dislocation as the children make their way through an unfamiliar landscape. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: A rare, wonderful film that works not just as surface entertainment. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: For both audiences who admire it and the protagonist who lives it, the intense, emotional "Lore" is a picture from life's other side. Read more

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic: Saskia Rosendahl as Lore is the sturdiest in a good cast, making her way cautiously into a new, utterly changed universe. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Shortland's camera creates a world that's shockingly fractured, shot at weird angles and pocked with truncated body parts, heads hanging upside down and undefined realities filled with quiet dread. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: A disconcerting and eerie film, made even more memorable since it's seen through the prism of childhood's end. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: "Lore" is the sort of movie you'd already expect to rip your heart out, but that doesn't diminish the tragedy when it does arrive. Read more

Steven Boone, Chicago Sun-Times: We know where this is going pretty early on, but that doesn't prevent "Lore" from being riveting stuff, start to finish. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: If "Lore" is an upsetting and uncomfortable film set in a morally bleak landscape, it also offers a guardedly optimistic vision of the possibility of human change. Read more

Leba Hertz, San Francisco Chronicle: Full of surprises, the movie draws a thin line between pity and revulsion - how would you feel if you had discovered your whole life had been based on lies? Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It's a harrowing walk through the heart of darkness. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: With a child's perspective on war, "Lore" deserves comparisons with "Empire of the Sun" and "Hope and Glory," and with a feisty female protagonist it stands virtually alone. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The young principals here, Malina and especially Rosendahl, are superb at conveying that premature hardening, their elastic minds pummelled by inelastic forces. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The sins of the Fatherland send a German teenage girl and her Nazi-connected family on the run in Australian director Cate Shortland's vividly rendered and sensual drama Lore. Read more

Cath Clarke, Time Out: It's a close, intimate film - sometimes so close you can feel the breath of its characters in your face. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: What starts as a flipped survival tale turns into historical tragisploitation that wallows in its slog of endless suffering. Read more

Richard Kuipers, Variety: Offers a fresh, intimate and mostly successful perspective on Germany's traumatic transition from conqueror nation to occupied state. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: Shortland draws fine work from her actors, particularly the haunting Rosendahl ... Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: "Lore" is not a love story, nor the story of a friendship. Rather, it's a story of healing and of how breaking, sometimes painfully, is often necessary before that process can begin. Read more