Avis Metacritic

Eternal Beauty, whilst it is not entirely devoid of cliché, provides a much-needed, deeply human alternative to the noisy and tragic narratives about hallucinatory derangement, terror, and victimisation that we may have come to expect from films about madness.

The muddled story-telling, a reflection of Jane's perception of the world, may frustrate some viewers. But those who can appreciate it as pointillist rather than linear will be able to appreciate fully Roberts' control of mood and the exceptional depth of the performances.

The film is, in the end, Hawkins’ to own. Her eyes — and her posture, her voice, her jittery movements — defy any show-stealing, and lend a solidity to a film that might be a little flimsy otherwise.

A brilliant Sally Hawkins stands atop Craig Roberts’ perceptive look at mental illness. Small but beautifully formed.

Creating a highly unusual and welcome look at schizophrenia that neither demonizes those with the condition nor patronizes them as suffering martyrs, the British drama Eternal Beauty pulls off a tricky feat.

This is substantial and rewarding.

While Eternal Beauty is oftentimes funny, it’s almost always dramatically profound and emotionally complex.

Roberts relies heavily on imagery suggesting a confused reality ( characters are constantly fractured into multiple reflections) but the use of colour is an effective shorthand that clues us into Jane’s state of mind.

With an assist from Sally Hawkins’ valiantly committed lead performance, the result occasionally summons the genuinely disoriented perspective of an unstable protagonist, but more often, it’s the filmmaking that seems to spiral out of control.

For the first half-hour or so of Eternal Beauty, Roberts and Hawkins take an unusual and intermittently illuminating approach to depicting mental illness. . . . But the movie doesn’t keep up its good work.