Paradoxically yet appropriately, Rivette's only “superproduction” to date . . . is his first realistic film since L'amour fou (1968)—and perhaps the only movie that offers a plausible portrait of what the 15th-century teenager who led the French into battle was actually like. . . . Bonnaire, who's seldom been better, gives a singular poignance to the line “I know what I must do, but at times I don't know how.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum
January 1, 1996