Metacritic reviews

Benoît Jacquot's tense, absorbing, pleasurably original look at three days in the life and lies of a doomed monarch.

Control is the operative element in Benoît Jacquot's work, with the main caveat being that when someone has it, someone else does not.

Historical drama set in the early days of the French revolution is intelligent Euro eye candy at its most lavish.

Working from Chantal Thomas' novel, Jacquot doesn't entirely scrape the gloss off this love triangle, which plays neither as a florid bodice-ripper nor as emotionally complex as it might have been. It stays on the surface, but at least that surface is gorgeous.

Once the rote plot takes over - the tension brought on by the film's you-are-there verisimilitude quickly devolves into soapily overwrought theatrics.

The pleasure of Jacquot's film is in watching various strains of discreet, heated, and deluded passionate attachment performed.

The picture coasts along quite nicely on the strength of its contemplative sensuality, its macaron colors, and the exquisite beauty of its three chief actresses, Léa Seydoux, Virginie Ledoyen and Diane Kruger. Oh, and there's nudity in it too, not to mention lesbian undertones – or are they overtones?

A well-observed but emotionally muted costume drama that might well have been titled "My Week With Marie Antoinette."

Benoît Jacquot's film is shackled to a blah bourgeois leftism.

The story refuses to combust; it's a strangely unsatisfying combination of bloodless observations and unresolved sexuality.