AllMovie

The titular heroine of Arnaud Desplechin's enigmatic film is a poor, unsophisticated woman from London's Jewish ghetto who becomes an unlikely stage star. Set in the gray gloom of the Industrial Age, Desplechin's film recalls antecedents as disparate as Martin Scorsese's Age of Innocence and François Truffaut's Wild Child while stubbornly remaining its own breed. In a performance that divided critics, Summer Phoenix plays Esther as a force of nature, a volatile blend of primal instinct and headstrong ambition. Hardly the ingenue we've come to expect from backstage dramas, Esther is an appallingly unsocialized creature, at once simple and unfathomable. On-stage, however, her rawness transmutes into spectacular acting. Not that we'd ever know, as Desplechin shies away from showing us Esther's performances, preferring to leave her greatness to our imagination. Desplechin's movie is as inscrutable as its heroine, if a lot more polished. Obscure about its intentions throughout, Esther Kahn builds to a thrilling climax, as a jilted Esther makes her grand, troubled debut in Ibsen's +Hedda Gabler with her former lover and his new paramour in the audience. The heart-stopping sequence, highlighting the tension between performance and reality, perfectly caps Desplechin's interrogation of the nature and mystery of acting.