Bonsai: Critic Reviews

In clumsier hands it would be easy to get lost amid the expanding thicket of narrative twists.

Jimenez's drama is crisply imprinted; another fine recent Chilean effort.

Bonsai seems like a veritable thicket of illuminating references and correspondences. A kind of poetry sprouts up even in some of the inevitable sad-twee flourishes.

One of the finest accomplishments from the freewheeling new generation of Chilean filmmakers.

This isn't a story of Shakespearean proportions, but it's a sweet peg for this complex, carefully constructed gem.

A youthful, melancholy film that draws on literature and writing for its inspiration.

Scenes of breezy intimacy mix well with deadpan comic moments, and Noguera's face is that rare male visage that seems boyishly opaque but over time suggests deep reserves of melancholy.

A melancholy story of romance and regret with moments of drollery and sweetness along the way.

Bonsai illustrates the unbearable lightness of loneliness in a quiet, delicate manner.

A creative film from Chile about love, books and bonsai.

Cristian Jimenez's film knows how entangled the will to know is with the will to make love.

Jimenez's dust-dry dramedy attests to the writer-director's own bibliophilia (the film is literally divided by chapter pages), as well as his lead actor's ability to milk a deadpan look that would make Buster Keaton proud.

Attractive cinematography shot in warm colours and neat, often comedic, composition.

Like a bonsai, Julio is a stunted developer, and this film is a bit of a miniature curio but also pleasantly odd, funny and warm.

A rather tiresome film in which headcase collides with bookcase.

A laid back, ludic literary romance (of sorts) that sets past against present and story against story.

A paradoxical anti-tragedy that dramatises the impossibility of originality and yet somehow still manages to be a true original, Bonsai is the right kind of precious.

The quiet understatement of the work bears endless reflection.

It's a brave irony that a film besotted with the pages of Proust is built around a character who couldn't be more of a closed book.

intriguing because of its Escheresque style of storytelling, but its intellectual appeal fails to reach the heart

Cristian Jimenez likes quirkiness and his enthusiasm for it, evidenced in his first film Optical Illusions and again here, goes a good way to convincing you to take the ride.