The Myth of Fingerprints (1997)
Critic Reviews
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75
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ReelViews James Berardinelli
A low-key holiday drama that's refreshing not only because it lacks the big discovery melodrama of most similar movies but because it's entirely believable.
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75
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Rolling Stone Peter Travers
This engrossing blend of humor and heartbreak only hints at the causes, from betrayal to child abuse, of this family's dysfunction. Hang on. Attention is richly rewarded.
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70
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Newsweek
Stands as a wonderful ensemble piece not unlike Woody Allen's dramas "Interiors" and "September."
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67
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Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Less can sometimes be perceived as more, but in the case of The Myth of Fingerprints less is simply less.
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63
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San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser
Freundlich's problem is that he has made an essentially interesting movie that never seems brave enough to say what it really intends.
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60
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The New York Times Stephen Holden
Has some good performances (Ms. Moore's ongoing snit is a terrifically sustained bit of glowering), but it only barely begins to knit its self-pitying characters into a credible family unit. They are oddballs with attitude.
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50
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San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack
When all is fretted and done, there's little dramatic payoff in this moody first feature by Bart Freundlich. But cinematographer Stephen Kazmierski's images are appealing, and the mood is on target -- Thanksgiving as hell.
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50
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Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The film has a kind of echo-filled emptiness to it that some will take as profundity and others as mere emptiness.
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40
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The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
As Freundlich surely knew, he must have counted, as do we, on the revelation of character to enrich the piece. It doesn't happen. None of the people is particularly interesting, not even the obligatory neurotic, well enough played by Julianne Moore. [6 October 1997, p. 28]
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40
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Salon Charles Taylor
The Myth of Fingerprints is only 90 minutes long, but watching all this tasteful torment, you can't help thinking that if you were watching a Jewish family or an Italian one, the air would be cleared -- and you'd be out of the theater -- a hell of a lot quicker.
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