Metacritic reviews

It's a curt, nasty and deftly acted chamber piece high on laughs and savagery about frustrated idealism and how little it takes to make society fall to pieces.

Unassuming and old-fashioned funny entertainment isn’t exactly what we associate with this film-maker, but that’s what she has very satisfyingly served up here. It’s not especially resonant or profound but it is observant and smart, with some big laughs in the dialogue. The whole thing is enjoyably absurd though not precisely absurdist.

The most enjoyable film yet from a director whose conceptual seriousness has often seemed daunting.

Slight and self-contained, it won’t go down in cinema history as anything but, perhaps, the most purely fun film ever made by peculiar British experimentalist Sally Potter.

Patricia Clarkson steals the show, but everyone in Potter’s gifted cast gets their moment to shine in a sharp-edged, claustrophobic parlour piece that puts the boot into middle-class mores.

Enjoyably acted by a fine ensemble cast, it crisply skewers the hypocrisies of its left-liberal, middle-class characters.

There is an energy to The Party, and a kind of rejuvenating bouncy glee that we haven’t seen from Potter in a long time. And after “Ginger and Rosa,” a film that felt better directed than it was written, being undermined by some very stilted dialogue, the fact the Potter also wrote the screenplay here comes as another pleasant surprise.

A charming little tragicomedy which flirts with savage social satire but never fully embraces it.

Riotous, if undeniably stagey.

It has a vigorous sense of entertainment value and a cast relishing every moment.