Metacritic reviews

Larraín’s Ema will grate some. Even so, it’s one of the most ambitious and visually stunning films of the year.

In the film, the literal union of bodies is the only logical means of conveying the reestablishment of emotional bonds.

Ema doesn’t always dance to a clear or recognizable beat, but anybody willing to get on its wavelength will be rewarded with one of the year’s most dynamic and electrifying films.

While I confess that I found Ema to be a notch down on his best work, it’s still hugely distinctive and daring and may well be a grower.

Larraín’s odd little film dances to the beat of its own drum, that’s for certain. But it does pay off in a wholly satisfying way.

Ema is Larraín at his most freeform.

What’s novel about Ema is that Pablo Larraín has made a movie that, in its form, is every bit as warped and jagged and jarring and difficult to cuddle up to as its heroine.

There’s so much to enjoy in Ema that it comes as a surprise that there’s so little there.

At once a visually expressionistic hymn to female agency and liberation, a psychological thriller that always stays one step ahead of the viewer and a flamboyant reggaeton dance musical, Ema will strike some as a heady celebration of a movie, while leaving others bemused by stylistics that sometimes overpower narrative and psychological plausibility.

A work of self-conscious experimentalism that's too stilted and distancing to invite involvement, it gets some mileage out of the pulsating rhythms of reggaetón street dance but otherwise is so fragmented it lacks forward motion.