"Elena" is a riveting psychological suspense film. full review

A quiet, subtle mystery whose long, penetrating takes have drawn comparisons to Andrei Tarkovsky and whose mordantly ironic conclusion may remind you of Claude Chabrol. full review

It's a sort of slow-boil Russian noir, if that genre exists, and if it doesn't, it does now. full review

The script, by Oleg Negin and Zvyagintsev, uses spare dialogue to quietly devastating effect. Performances are superb across the board, framed in elegant widescreen compositions that simmer with violence. full review

Andrei Zvyagintsev's film isn't stupid or crude, and we can pretty well imagine how all the characters feel, even though it doesn't make them sympathetic. full review

A nicely noirish, cynically satisfying drama set in a gritty, urban Moscow that would otherwise not seem to be a haven for wildlife. full review

Here's a tip: Don't feel. Think. Zvyagintsev wants you to come out of "Elena" thinking something, and if your realization is an uneasy one, that's OK with him. full review

"Elena" reveals a filmmaker in full command of his art and not much interested in catering to an audience. If you want this film, you have to meet it more than halfway. full review

Naturalism lives. If Zola were a Russian in Russia today, he might have written Elena. full review

Performances are superb across the board, framed in elegant widescreen compositions that simmer with violence. full review

[A] sluggish, portentous melodrama... full review

'Elena" is a grim, somber portrait of life in Putin's Russia, where the haves and have-nots uneasily co-exist. full review

The truly terrible question asked by this quiet, haunting and magnificent film is: Dear God, isn't there some better way to live? full review

Deeper down, the movie seethes quietly with the moody influence of other East European masters of the timeless ineffable. full review

Post-Soviet Russia in Andrei Zvyagintsev's somber, gripping film "Elena" is a moral vacuum where money rules, the haves are contemptuous of the have-nots, and class resentment simmers. full review

The cautious, controlling, abstemious bourgeoisie are overtaken by the heedlessly fertile lower orders, the temporary inheritors of a terribly weary earth. full review