A famous writer claims on NPR that she intends to end her life and male writers may compete to become executor of her estate. Men drive up the mountain and are challenged intellectually and erotically, until one discovers Maya's end game.
The red-blooded vivacity of Ms. Olin's performance ... pierces through the muck. She chews feeble lines like meat, spitting out the masticated remains.
That's not a way of saying, "Don't bother with this movie." By all means, bother. Just know that the human munition in the title role is so screen-filling that the actual story is a little flat by comparison.
[Its] feminist boldness crosses into the exhilarating. This is an unapologetic dare to accept a woman, with all her genius and all her faults - all her humanity - on full defiant display.
Is Maya Dardel serious? The regal Lena Olin plays her with frank ferocity and arrogant certainty, but so much about the grandiose poet borders on parody.
A film that only serves as a reminder that Lena Olin can still deliver a fantastic performance, even if it's buried in a piece of overwritten nonsense.
