68
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlVillage VoiceAlan ScherstuhlThe final, moving, nerve-wracking reels are all sea, sky, and desperation.
- 80New York Daily NewsNew York Daily NewsThe energy, thrum and heartache of modern Havana keep this teen drama afloat when it just as easily could have drifted into cliché waters.
- 75McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMcClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreIn Spanish with English subtitles, has a lovely, big budget sheen (Shlomo Godder was the cinematographer) and a cast that plays this as documentary real.
- 75Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMiami HeraldRene RodriguezMolloy occasionally goes overboard with her realistic approach to storytelling (there’s a sex scene that is way more graphic than it needed to be), but mostly Una noche thrums with the vibrant energy of restless youth taking their fates into their own hands, for better or worse.
- 70VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangWriter-director Lucy Mulloy’s sexy, pulsing debut feature has an undercurrent of ribald comedy that doesn’t entirely prepare the viewer for the harrowing turn it eventually takes, but it nonetheless amounts to a bracing snapshot of desperate youths putting their immigrant dreams into action.
- 63Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSlant MagazineEd GonzalezUna Noche tugged at my heartstrings, but the film's almost phantasmagoric fixation on sex can feel crass and dehumanizing.
- 60The DissolveAndrew LapinThe DissolveAndrew LapinThough Mulloy has a great eye for setting and theme, her grasp of character can be spotty.
- 58The A.V. ClubNick SchagerThe A.V. ClubNick SchagerThroughout, Una Noche’s details — an old man singing as he staggers down the street, young boys wasting away their days playfully leaping into the water — feel authentic.
- 40Time OutMichael AtkinsonTime OutMichael AtkinsonDocumentarian Anailín Lucy Mulloy’s eye for the decaying textures of modern Cuba on the ground is sharp, and there are passages—as the dull characters mope and kill time and work up snits—in which you wish the movie were simply nonfiction. As it is, everything feels fake except the Centro Habana barrios themselves.