The Light Between Oceans

"In adapting and directing M.L. Stedman's novel, Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond The Pines), casts a powerhouse acting duo in Michael Fassbender, and Alicia Vikander. They play Tom, a the tortured WWI survivor, and Isabel, his wife. Serving as lighthouse keepers in remote Western Australian, they rescue a baby adrift in a boat, (a Biblical reference to Moses, who was found floating in a basket). Years later they meet the real mother, setting off all sorts of melodramatic machinations: tell the truth, or keep the child they’ve grown to love?"

"Often beautiful and moving, but emotionally it never quite sticks."

"Ladies and gentlemen, let your hankies unfurl."

"The film's solemn visual rhythms exert an almost hypnotic spell that for a time gives a heroic dimension to a story as emotionally fraught as a vintage Bette Davis melodrama."

"Strangely unmoving and the saddest thing about it was leaving the cinema with that packet of tissues intact."

"Fassbender and Vikander make the film work, just."

"The actors hurl themselves into their roles with sufficient commitment and feeling that you believe in Tom and Isabel completely, even when the creaky narrative machinery around them begins to trigger your skepticism."

""The Light Between Oceans" winds up taking one too many self-serious twists and turns. The film earns its darkness, but it might have been even more affecting if it didn't shrink from the light."