Metacritic reviews

Its emotional dilemmas, depictions of trauma, revenge and fractured family ties are handled with such skill and sense of purpose, it is truly exemplary film-making.

The most disturbing thing about the impressively disturbing Rose Plays Julie may just be how satisfying it is.

Get ready for a tense ride because writers/directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Rose Plays Julie never relinquishes its sense of brooding until the very last frame’s welcome exhale of relief.

A deeply aware film, Rose Plays Julie allows for the fantastic as a means and space of catharsis.

Rose Plays Julie is very controlled in its style: this control reaps huge rewards.

Rose Plays Julie is an emotionally cathartic thriller.

It is a really powerful film and Brady’s final dialogue scene exerts a lethal grip.

Layering its fairly straightforward story of an adopted Irish girl who tracks down her birth mother with immersive visual and aural motifs, it plays more like modern operatic tragedy than run-of-the-mill social drama.

The film is strong enough in performance and direction to survive any discrepancies between the social drama it begins as with the revenge thriller it becomes. Still, Rose Plays Julie's sudden turn of events feels like an intrusion on a better story.

Amid the lush greenery of the setting, the atmosphere is perpetually bone-chilling — complete with an ominously high-pitched score — making the film seem distant and difficult to fully embrace