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08/16/07
Kira's Reason: A Love Story (2003)
67 %
Reviews Counted: 18 Fresh: 12 Rotten:6 Average Rating: 5.7/10
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Synopsis: From the screenwriter of THE CELEBRATION comes KIRA'S REASON: A LOVE STORY, a Danish Dogme film directed by Ole Christian Madsen. A recovering mental patient, Kira (Stine Stengade) returns home to her husband after a stay in a psychiatric hospital, only to begin a long and difficult... [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Stine Stengade, Lars Mikkelsen, Sven Wollter, Camilla Bendix, Ronnie Hiort Lorenzen
Reviews
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top Critic
An incredibly touching ride along the jilting, jarring ups-and-downs of a deeply, madly loving relationship, where two people never quit trying, and failing, together.
05/29/06
[S]tunning... a sometimes painfully intimate peek at a crumbling marriage...
08/08/04
As [Kira's] actions become more impulsive and her marriage unravels, the film is engagingly unpredictable.
04/15/04
Its pat finale ill-befits a film that otherwise strives successfully for stark emotional realism.
02/13/04
...Stengade’s portrayal of a mad housewife is alternately arresting and repelling, the kind of work for which they ought to hand out statues.
05/05/03
Had the film's center been the husband, it would have been more intriguing.
03/16/03
Stengade, in her first leading role, is at once vulnerable and frighteningly manic.
03/04/03
While Madsen and his Dogme 95 colleagues seek to overcome Hollywood’s influence, Kira's Reason is an indication that they are a product of the same patriarchy.
02/01/03
This Danish import provides a showcase for the lead actors, especially wide-eyed Stengade, who manages sensuality amid all the emotional volatility.
01/24/03
Steeped in a chaotic intensity that characterizes a fractured, disoriented mind.
01/19/03
Stengarde gives an arresting performance as a mentally unstable woman.
01/17/03
The film never particularly achieves any depth or resonance and ultimately comes across as a series of wacky, albeit rather disturbing episodes.
01/17/03
Top Critic
The most colorful Dogme film, and the best to portray beauty, albeit damaged beauty.
01/17/03
[Allows] the actors to inhabit characters who are painfully contradictory, frustrating, flawed, vulnerable and bound to each other.
01/16/03
Despite Kira's Reason's chamber-drama focus, it never achieves [Madsen's] first film's intimacy.
01/14/03
In Stine Stengade's intensely engaging performance, Kira is always one step away from the abyss, although, without apparent effort, she manages to hang on.
10/24/02
Tying up the psychological loose ends of a movie that promised so much more, the trite ending subscribes to the bogus therapeutic notion that one good cry and a confession of vulnerability can wipe away a lifetime of repression.
10/23/02
Top Critic1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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