79
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100CineVueChristopher MachellCineVueChristopher MachellPetrov’s Flu finds its meaning through sensation, memory and aesthetics, depicting social and political decay in its purest form stripped of the comforting scaffolding of linear narrative.
- 91The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangPetrov’s Flu is fascinating partly because of the chunky muscularity – the inherent masculine brawniness – of Serebrennikov’s filmmaking, in which dreams are as solid and hard-edged as reality, and reality is a blockish, jostling thing.
- 90Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangLos Angeles TimesJustin ChangWhile Serebrennikov may be banned from leaving Russia, his imagination, as well as his cast and crew, have been left gratifyingly free to roam: In its form-bending construction and surreal imagery, Petrov’s Flu plays like the work of an artist thrillingly unbound.
- 83The Film StageRory O'ConnorThe Film StageRory O'ConnorPlaying out at breakneck speed, it is awash with flights of fancy: outbursts of sex and violence; aliens and murder; sepia-dripped nostalgia; jarring temporal and spatial uncertainty; homoeroticism; etc. That sense of dizziness is only further confounded by Vlad Ogai’s shifting sets and richly detailed production design, and cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants’ long roving takes. Its cast has the sense of a troupe. The frame is always packed.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinThe Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinThis hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot.
- 40The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawNo one could doubt the technical mastery of this movie and its formal audacity. But for all that, I found something unliberating in its mercurial restlessness.