Opiniões dos críticos

Strickland’s antiworld, in the case of ["Katalin Varga"], confounds pastoral imagery in its diffusion and complication of codified images, just as his latter films would represent a reconstitution of the same.

Strickland's film is, if you like, a forgery or an imposture, in that it's not exactly what a British director would "naturally" produce. But, notwithstanding the anomaly that it represents, the proof of "Katalin Varga" lies in the dramatic chill that, little by little, this subtle but powerful film comes to impart.

The most striking aspect of a slow, self-consciously poetic film is the complex soundtrack with its electronic music, murmuring voices and heightened natural sounds of wind, water, thunder and rustling vegetation.

It's the sort of film that looks as if it is going to drift dreamily away in an arthouse torpor; in fact, it comes to a satisfying narrative crunch. There is actual suspense, of a sort. It's a woozy noir, with a hint of the supernatural.

Strickland’s intricate screenplay thrives on not letting us see around the next corner until the very last moment... There’s the occasional contrivance to shunt the story onwards, but it’s not enough to cloud the fact that Strickland and his star, [Hilda] Peter, have delivered a film of remarkable assurance and intensity.

Some may feel that Strickland veers a little too much into metaphysical territory at the expense of keeping the tension up. Others may dislike his partiality to painterly compositions and Tarkovskian cinematic poetry. Despite such arguable flaws, "Katalin Varga" often hits a note of genuine otherworldliness, and the power of this slow-burning, nightmarish tale is utterly compelling.

British debutant Peter Strickland’s feel for Transylvania, where he spent several years shooting this slow-burning revenge movie, is quite remarkable. He’s greatly aided by György Kovács’ sound design and Márk Gyõri’s camerawork, which give Hilda Péter’s quest to find the man who raped her a decade earlier a timelessness disconcerting for a modern tale.

Happily Strickland proves more than adequate to the challenge he has imposed on himself, as he exposes male and female attitudes that seem both universal and the product of specific historical circumstances; draws nuanced and believable performances from his cast; and reveals an eye for landscape and place that for me recalled early Werner Herzog.

Strickland... strives to create a highly expressionistic form of realism that is much more emotionally powerful than the standard variety. It takes a while for everything to mesh, but once it does, the film moves toward a profundity that is modest but telling.

Stark and archaic story of the vindictive journey of a wronged woman and her son is set in contemporary Transylvania, but is infused with archetypes that go back to the early days of storytelling. The novice helmer is fully in command of the material and the pic is always engaging, despite the obvious direction in which it’s headed.

The novice British director Peter Strickland has taken a brave and foolhardy gamble with Katalin Varga... the results, however, are quietly mesmerising... A complex moral terrain and slow-burning tone reminiscent of Pawel Pawlikowski ("My Summer of Love") announce the arrival of a genuine film-making talent.