...this is about the dark heart of Poland itself. The wounded love at its centre surfaces from the depths of cynicism, exhaustion and state-sponsored submission and fear.

An aching film on such exquisite pains of impossible love, Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” concurrently swells your heart and breaks it, just like the sore memory of a lover that drifted away from your life...

Glenn Close is as memorable here as she’s ever been.

...a haunted romantic epic in miniature, like a novel written with the careful, precise economy of a short story.

Pawlikowski leaves the cliched wartime romance at the door, strips away the melodrama, and makes every interaction between Zula and Wiktor carry greater weight than other films of the genre.

...moving, rich with period detail and startlingly well-acted.

...a dark musical full of silences and ellipses.

Filmen bader i smukke billeder. Vinterlandskaber, religiøs ikonografi og panoreringer langs Seine-bredden, som også Tarkovskij og Dreyer sikkert havde nikket anerkendende til.