 Lindsay Anderson criticized the film, stating "the camera is never still; every shot has the tension of a conjuring trick.The sleight of hand is dazzling, but fatally distracting...With a supple, ingenious, glittering flow of images that is aesthetically the diametric opposite of Mme.de Vilmorin's chaste prose, he has made the film an excuse for a succession of rich, decorative displays...In all this visual "frou-frou" it is not surprising that the characters become lost and the interior development of the drama is almost completely unobserved."