Metacritic reviews

For those following the career trajectory of Pietro Marcello, the feature works as another example of a nuanced filmmaker delivering a surprisingly different kind of cinematic experience. At its core, this is a memorable portrait of a father-daughter relationship and the power of dreams above all.

With a work like Scarlet, so gossamer-airy and enchanting that it could almost be family-adjacent viewing like Petite Maman, we are witnessing Marcello in a mercurial, mid-career stage, watching his sensibility truly take shape.

Smaller, sweeter and more sensitive than Marcello’s earlier work.

One of the attractions of Scarlet is that it doesn’t fit obvious categorization, which means that you’re not always sure where it’s headed or why. The vibe is by turns sober, warm, melancholic and playful to the point of near-silliness.

It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but Marcello has a talent for making such material come alive through his inventive direction, whisking us away to a time and place that we experience as if we were actually there. It’s not enough to make Scarlet a great movie, but it’s one that manages to puts us in its shoes the way few films nowadays do.

Quietly rewarding thanks to an excellent cast whose faces we observe in frequent close-ups as their dirt-poor characters do their very best with scant resources.

It’s a bit of a mess, no doubt about that, but a fascinating one.

As-is, Scarlet is a beautiful loll, content with its self-made magic.

The film drifts so far into weightless fantasy that it practically dissipates before one’s eyes.

The arresting visual competency of Scarlet, which includes the clever use of archival footage previously seen in Marcello’s Venice darling “Martin Eden” and the beautifully composed textures of its cinematography, can’t salvage its muddled pace.