Ask the Dust Critic Reviews

More than anything else, Ask the Dust feels like a compendium of desires - for a city, for a woman, for youth.Read the full review

Ask the Dust requires an audience with a special love for film noir, with a feeling for the loneliness and misery of the writer.Read the full review

Ask The Dust may find Towne a little past his prime, but after so much time in the Hollywood wilderness, it's good to see him trying again.Read the full review

At a time when juvenile movies often dominate theaters, this is an adult movie through-and-through, and evidence that there are filmmakers who care about entertaining a more mature audience.Read the full review

Thirty years of gestation have produced a film of great beauty with unfulfilled promise - a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about.Read the full review

The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.Read the full review

The film, which is literary to a fault, includes an earthquake, but if the earth moves at all, thank Hayek, who gives the tale a smoldering life that finally lifts it from the page.Read the full review

After an hour or so, Ask the Dust seems to have said everything, and the air starts to seep out of its hermetic atmosphere.Read the full review

Highlighted by a strong and sensual performance from Salma Hayek as the doomed heroine, elegant pic's muted quality and the central character's vexingly contrary behavior will keep auds from connecting with characters who themselves have trouble establishing bonds.Read the full review