The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye 2012

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle: Rarely do films offer such intimate insights into the inner workings of a true artist. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: Frayed-looking performance film alternates with cuddly home movies and the director's theatrical interventions, but the couple's willingness to bare flesh only heightens the overall feeling of artifice. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Losier has made a quietly revolutionary work that treats a pair of people on the fringes with the decency all humans deserve. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: Like P-Orridge's music, it feels spontaneous, garish, sometimes ugly, and sometimes simply random. But that may be the most proper way to approach P-Orridge's life: It's an imitative, illustrative portrait rather than simple reporting. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This is a manic, overmedicated, and remembered elegy. It's also private, personal, and obscure, a ballad meant more for its subjects' eyes and ears than ours. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: This edgy documentary manages to tell an affecting love story even as it ventures into the cultish, transgressive world of underground music. Read more

Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: The film takes the viewer not just into the world of Genesis and Lady Jaye, but somehow, as a true ballad should, into their hearts. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Losier's film captures the poignant paradoxes, the ecstasies and burdens, of the transformation of life into art. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: How often do we tell our lovers that we feel at one with them, that we want to emulate their best qualities? Here we see an amazing couple who take that ego-obliterating infatuation to its logical conclusion. Read more

Guy Dixon, Globe and Mail: It's rare for a documentary style to match its subject so ideally. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: Archival performance footage gives the doc historical weight, but P-Orridge often comes across as an attention-seeking diva as he endlessly mugs for whatever camera is around. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: Ballad functions as a dreamlike portrait of her subjects. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: A frustrating if fitfully fascinating documentary about the singer, writer and performance artist known as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and his wife, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. Read more