String" were written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Jan A.P. Kaczmarek composed the music for that tune as well as "Tu chiami una vita," with lyrics by Salvatore Quasimodo, and "L'Absence," with lyrics by Théophile Gautier. Release Box office The film opened on October 10, 1997 and earned $14,352 in its opening weekend. By the time the film closed, it had grossed $1,851,761 in the domestic box office. Critical reception In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "bracing and perfectly cast" and Jennifer Jason Leigh "unstintingly gutsy". She added, "Ms. Holland gives this story compelling intimacy and a brusque, energetic pace...Maggie Smith steals many a scene." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed "Jennifer Jason Leigh often plays women of brassy boldness...what is remarkable is how she can also play a recessive character such as Catherine so that every assertion seems like an act of courage." In Variety, Todd McCarthy wrote "Washington Square emerges with only a portion of its force and complexity intact in this new screen version. Quite faithful to the novel but imbued with something of a feminist twist, Agnieszka Holland's handsome picture captures the ambiguity of this 19th-century tale about a plain young woman's deception by a seductive fortune hunter, but misses the full measure of its acute psychological precision and bitter irony...Also problematic is Holland's cinematic approach, which in its less-than-graceful camera scheme and often arbitrary interaction of shots represents nothing close to the visual correlative of James' cool, refined, utterly precise literary style. The story is so good that it retains a reasonable amount of its force, but the rather scattershot and sometimes overheated treatment here is, in fact, not especially well suited to it." Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "meticulous," Jennifer Jason Leigh as "very good," and Albert Finney as "specific and effective." Of Maggie Smith, he said, she "indulges in blatant scene-stealing as Catherine's fussbudget Aunt Lavinia, but the merriment with which she commits her crimes makes it easy to forgive her." He added "Even with its merits, Washington Square runs too long and ends with an ambiguous look from Leigh that feels like a bit of tagged-on feminism by Holland...Moreover, coming as it does on the heels of so many chaste Merchant-Ivory costumers and all the other well-appointed adaptations of Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and E.M. Forster, (it) suffers,