Avis Metacritic

It advocates risk and consciousness as the only means to overcome the cold, repressive hand of so-called normative thought.

The story is not sensationalistic, although its love scene could not be more emotional. It`s a gentle story of someone being brought in from the cold.

This is an astonishingly polished and nuanced first film. It deserves to be celebrated, not quibbled with.

Though not without problems, Desert Hearts is a triumph for director Donna Deitch and an inspiration for any independent filmmaker.

Deitch is well served by Shaver as the teacher and Charbonneau as the young seducer. Best of all, however, is the way the movie dignifies all its characters.

I might have enjoyed Desert Hearts more if it had been more subtle and observant about the two women. It might have been a better movie if it had been about discovery instead of seduction.

Desert Hearts has no voice or style of its own. It's as flat as a recorded message from the telephone company.

Helen Shaver, playing the lead, does a most commendable job as a character who starts by being all tied up inside, and ends up by melting and opening up to emotions she couldn’t even conceive before.

For a story about sexual awakening and discovery, Desert Hearts is a taut, fatally careful movie with no looseness--and no abandon--to it and no feeling for detail that would let these characters really live.

The movie seems sincere in wanting to explore rather than exploit its subject, but any potential insights are cut off by too-obvious characterizations and plot twists. [04 Apr 1986, p.23]