SummaryIn chronicling the experiences of Maya, a young Mexican woman who crosses the border illegally and must fend for herself in contemporary Los Angeles, director Ken Loach takes an individual's personal and professional struggle and builds it into a moving portrait of one of our nation's most troubled -- and least visible -- communities. (Lions Gat... Read More
Directed By:Ken Loach
Written By:Paul Laverty
Bread and Roses
Metascore
Mixed or Average
57
User score
Mixed or Average
5.4
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
57
58% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
26% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
16% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
100
The film is never less than a satisfying mix of compelling entertainment and social critique. The performances are uniformly superb.
75
The reason Bread and Roses works as well as it does is that as didactic as it sometimes gets, its heart is always bigger than its ideology.
70
There are scenes here that fill one with rage or bring tears to the eyes.
67
It's a passionate film powered by the righteous anger of injustice.
50
It would be easy to pigeonhole this as "Norma Rae" en L.A., and Padilla is at least as ingratiating and as much of a guy magnet as Sally Field was in that movie.
40
A genuine consciousness-raiser, but it's less a social-realist narrative than a high-volume rally.
25
Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty draw everything in simplistic, overstated terms. The good guys are pure and spunky, the bad guys bellicose and one-dimensional, the conflicts stripped of nuance.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.4
60% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
40% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
May 2, 2016
0
A must-have for any movie is sympathy with the leading protagonists. This movie fails, woefully, from the outset as one's sympathies lie with the people it is trying to vilify. I had to force myself to sit through it. It is vague, sentimental, do-gooding trash that is just indulgent nonsense from the 'arty' community. The 'heroine' is an illegal immigrant. In other words, she should not be in LA to start with. She is then given a cleaning job by a sympathetic supervisor who has no need to employ illegal immigrants, jeopardising his own position. Of course she is not going to have the backing of any union! She's ILLEGAL!!!!! The film tries (but fails) to create dislike for the supervisor and rally emotional support for a bunch of cleaners who should actually be grateful for their employment as they are all ILLEGAL. If you don't like it, go back to Mexico and have no job. Crikey. What a waste of time, which I will never get back. The movie is truly pointless.
Production Company:
- Parallax Pictures
- ARD Degeto Film
- ARTE
- Alta Films
- Alta Producción
- BIM Distribuzione
- Bac Films
- British Screen Productions
- British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB)
- Cinart
- FilmFour
- Filmcoopi Zürich
- Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen
- La Sept-Arte
- Road Movies Filmproduktion
- Tornasol Films
- Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR)
Release Date:May 11, 2001
Duration:1 h 50 m
Rating:R
Tagline:The Balance Of Power Is About To Change.
Awards
ALMA Awards
• 1 Win & 4 Nominations
British Independent Film Awards
• 3 Nominations
Political Film Society, USA
• 2 Nominations
