Promise at Dawn's reviews
Media reviews
Fotogramas
A generous superproduction, with shootings in various sceneries, that can be seen like a competent inquiry in the ins and outs of an Edipo complex that refuses its name, but not its depth (...). It will be enjoyable for those who love to watch bigger-than-life stories in which, in case something was missing, the History with a capital H slips in too.
El País
The present version of Barbier has a problem in its base that, initially, should be definitive: it takes more than an hour to take off (...). Thus, its episodic nature increases in a narration that abuses of the voice over, and it turns, paradoxically, in a discretely narrated story told.
El Mundo
A production with a generous budget filmed in several locations that focuses, however, almost exclusively on its two main characters and their tight dependance, sketching out as a paradoxical chant of the prints and consequences of maternal love in a zigzagging tone that wages permanently between the dramatic and the ridiculous, as the only way to frame the excess of feelings and the insane of many situations.
El Periódico
'Promise at dawn' adopts a maximalist attitude: its excessive length accumulates genres and is overflowing with plot complications; its actors overact like there's no tomorrow -the acting of Charlotte Gainsbourg borders the unbearable-, and the tale on its whole adopts a grandiloquent tone favored by the impeccable reconstruction of times and places.
Variety
It?s all a bit of a rambling lark, working toward an inevitable, glaringly telegraphed tearjerker of a resolution that gets the desired response, however clunky the setup. Nothing here sticks to the soul the way Gary?s prose does, and the natty Niney doesn?t quite project the internal passion and pain needed to fire the film through its stodgier interludes.
The Hollywood Reporter
This tastefully appointed new version lacks the touch of crazy creation that would have made it feel more of a piece with its subject, with initial audience response in France, where it was released as a prestigious year-end release, more polite than overwhelming ? much like the product itself.