Not one of the nine reviews comes down against Truffaut’s film, and most place it near the top of their scale. The praise gathers in two places. The first is Jeanne Moreau, whose Catherine most critics treat as the reason the film still holds: volatile, free, and hard to look away from. The second is the filmmaking itself, with the camerawork and editing singled out repeatedly for their energy and invention. Several reviews also credit the three leads together for making the triangle work.
The reservations are modest and scattered rather than shared. Slant Magazine finds the character writing thin in places and the ending hastily staged, and The Guardian, while otherwise admiring, has doubts about how the film sees Catherine and the men who orbit her. Variety, writing on release, calls it occasionally uneven. The two earliest reviews are also the coolest; the spread is narrow, and the film’s standing has, if anything, risen since.