Metacritic reviews

The film demands and rewards repeat viewings; it’s different, and more entrancing, every time.

The Girl and the Spider’s lovely concluding shot visualizes this fading relationship, and stands as the filmmakers’ final statement on the fleeting nature of love in all its forms. It is both bitter and sweet. So is this beautiful film.

Unassumingly electrifying and amusingly elusive, this modern-day fable focuses on the marks we leave behind in others when paths diverge and physical distance grows.

Unlike Mara, the writer-directors of The Girl and the Spider can shape and control their story. They orchestrate a closing sequence of high-impact lyricism, bringing their tale of the mystery-infused quotidian to a shimmering, open-ended conclusion.

This is an odd film of poetic abstractions and ellipses, but consistently fascinating in its unrepentant coyness.

Few directors could get away with giving audiences so little context or plot, but the Zürchers succeed in piquing our curiosity, which is all one really needs to sustain a film.

It pays off in a work of gorgeous stylistic precision where cautious glances and wistful anecdotes melt together to form a melancholy arthouse jewel about the tearing down of one woman’s identity.

My own taste runs to different modes of poetic cinema, but I credit The Girl and the Spider for the seemingly paradoxical clarity of its mysterious vision.

Precisely observed but somewhat aloof in tone, The Girl And The Spider builds into a symphony of separation and solitude.

Zürcher spins byzantine webs of audiovisual stimuli from an ultimately modest dramatic core, and not only is the larger narrative design unclear before it’s finally revealed, it’s easy to get stuck dwelling on the minutia along the way.