Critic Reviews

Ines and Emilie have tensions between them which are uncomfortably alive, and Langseth’s script is a gnawing reminder that, even when the date of death is set, family quarrels and resentments can still be corrosive.

For a film that literally isolates its characters from the rest of the world to confront each other head-on, the drama plays more conventional than challenging.

The film exhibits almost nothing that resembles recognizable human behavior.

Euphoria is undeniably a missed opportunity at creating a drama of frayed sisterhood that feels fresh and unique. The film is also too restrained and unambitious to make a grand statement on mortality.

Equal parts solemn and sappy, Euphoria marks a well-performed if extremely heavy-handed foray into English-language filmmaking for Swedish director Lisa Langseth.

Alicia Vikander, Eva Green and Charlotte Rampling pump some energy into writer-director Lisa Langseth’s overly static, chatty drama, but are let down by a movie that keeps promising — and failing — to blossom into something more.

It’s not that Euphoria lacks good intentions or comes off as superficial in its treatment of death and dying. It’s just that there’s so much potential for grace or humor or despair or horror inherent in its premise. It’s sad to see so much of that thematic territory go so thoroughly, if politely, unexplored.

Euphoria struggles to be little more than a hum-drum meditation on kicking the bucket.

The catharsis feels fake and unearned. Moreover, the film lacks the warmth and respect for all of of its characters displayed in Langseth’s previous work.

Notwithstanding a lively turn from Charles Dance as a chatty brain-tumor sufferer and a perfect Charlotte Rampling as a tranquil guide to oblivion, Euphoria gives up the ghost well before either of its unhappy heroines.