Most critics admire Tess, and the praise gathers almost entirely around how it looks. Review after review names the colour photography and the production design as the film’s chief virtues, with one critic likening the scale to David Lean. Nastassja Kinski’s performance draws steady approval, described as delicate and deeply moving. A number of critics also note how unlikely a project this seems for Polanski, and read it through his own history and his recurring interest in innocence spoiled.
The reservations start where the beauty ends. The New Yorker finds the film smooth and hypnotic but tame, going soft on Hardy’s rawer material and reducing Tess to a pure victim. Empire calls it good in parts but far too long, blaming the pace on fidelity to the novel. Time Out goes furthest, judging it cloying and hollow, more interested in the director’s preoccupations than the book’s. The spread is wide, though the dissenters are a minority.