78
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 85TheWrapSteve PondTheWrapSteve PondThree Faces is typical of the canny director’s output in the way it’s modest but profound, leisurely but urgent, a portrait of a country disguised as a meandering road movie.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe three main characters are all vividly sketched.
- 80Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim Grierson3 Faces can sometimes feel like a whimsical doodle without much forward momentum. But that placidness belies a certain degree of melancholic resignation on Panahi’s part, for himself and his homeland.
- 75The A.V. ClubA.A. DowdThe A.V. ClubA.A. DowdPanahi has frequently blurred the line between cinema and reality; here, he builds the search for that line into the work itself, even flirting, playfully, with a self-critique.
- 75Slant MagazineSam C. MacSlant MagazineSam C. MacWhenever Panahi's architecturally rigorous study of the self, society, and artistic communion threatens to get too self-conscious or loaded, the filmmaker tends to leaven the tension with humor and gentle irreverence.
- 75The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaThe Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaThe director’s characteristic humanism and rejection of easy judgments suffuses the film with sincere empathy – refreshingly, he acknowledges his own role in the entrenched patriarchal culture he’s critiquing, both as a man and film director. As such, when 3 Faces closes on a bittersweet note, the hopeful gesture of its closing image feels neither cheap nor unearned.
- 70Although 3 Faces is far from Panahi’s best work, it’s still a solid primer on how much a skilled filmmaker can achieve with very few resources.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawJafar Panahi has here created a quietly engaging quasi-realist parable, part of his ongoing and unique creative cine-autobiography, full of intelligence and humility and a real respect for women and for female actors. It is gentle, elusive, and redolent of this director’s mysterious Iranian zen.
- 60CineVueJohn BleasdaleCineVueJohn BleasdalePanahi keeps everything as softly spoken as his own onscreen presence and yet some of those quiet observations are devastating.