62
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleLos Angeles TimesRobert AbeleWhether the arc of Marya’s fate feels overly engineered to you or not, Quartet retains its power to unsettle in its accumulation of cuts and bruises, the rare Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala effort that mines a glamorized past not for nuanced dignity but for a kind of elegant, honest sordidness.
- 70The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyAlmost always entertaining to watch and infuriatingly wrong in several important ways, chief among these being the casting of Miss Adjani as Marya.
- 70NewsweekNewsweekTheir best work since the fresh and appealing studies in cultural clash they made in India in the '60s, such as "Shakespeare Wallah." Movies are not literature, and Ivory is a dangerously literary director. But in Quartet he has found the images to express Jean Rhys's troubling vision of female fatality. [9 Nov 1981, p.94]
- 60Time OutTime OutMaggie Smith and Alan Bates successfully personify the cold spirit that Rhys held to be pre-war England, but Adjani manages merely to reduce Marya's fatalism to spinelessness. The direction, intimate yet retaining a sense of distance, is true both to Rhys and to Ivory.
- 60Washington PostGary ArnoldWashington PostGary ArnoldLike their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]
- 40TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineIvory's dispassionate direction precludes real involvement with the characters, resulting in a peculiarly austere depiction of a colorful era.