Lady Macbeth

"Adapted from the 1865 novella by Russian author Nikolai Leskov, but transplanted to the UK’s bleak Northumberland moors, William Oldroyd's debut plays out like a Victorian Handmaid's Tale. The first scene shows young Katherine (Florence Pugh) married off to local landowner Alexander (Paul Hilton), her face completely wrapped in a wedding veil that looks more like a shroud."

"Florence Pugh announces herself as a major talent to watch in William Oldroyd's impressively tough-minded Victorian tragedy."

"Madame Bovary meets Thérèse Raquin with a splash of Lady Chatterley in a pared-down drama that packs a real punch."

"This brilliantly feminist British indie film plunges a cold, sharp knife into the back of bonnet dramas."

"It could well open up a dark new avenue in the bonnets-and-bows world of classic literary adaptation."

"One of the most entertaining and engrossing watches of 2017."

"A powerfully austere nineteenth-century drama, and an uncompromising attempt to make that rare thing, a genuine British art film."

"Lady Macbeth mostly operates within established period conventions, but draws fresh blood from antique material thanks to a sparky cast, subtle nods to contemporary race and gender issues, and a hefty shot of gothic melodrama."

"...the whole adds up to rather less than the sum of its parts."

"This intelligently scripted and imposingly played costume noir revisits the conventions of Victorian melodrama to comment on modern attitudes to oppression, prejudice and morality."