Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
[A] thorough, thoughtful and disturbing documentary .

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Here it is, folks, in your face. Will you look or return to your own private Happy Valley?

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Happy Valley," even as it revisits past events, has a chilling timeliness.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Less an investigation into or comprehensive summary of the Penn State sex-abuse scandal than a look at the feelings it elicited, Amir Bar-Lev's Happy Valley is more concerned with the phenomenon of team spirit than any single question of fact.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
"Happy Valley" is a devastating portrait of a community-and, by extension, a nation-put under a spell, even reduced to grateful infantilism, by the game of football.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's not a groundbreaking thesis, but we still get a fascinating tour of a town that may never be the same again.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
It has no new information to offer regarding the case, and doesn't even do a terribly coherent job of organizing the details for the benefit of some hypothetical ignorant viewer.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
"Happy Valley" does not try to lead you to any firm conclusion about who or what is to blame for what went wrong in the football-crazed farmland of central Pennsylvania, and viewers with different perspectives will understand it in different ways.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
The troubling tale is well told, unpacked with a clarity and a minimum of ominous mood music.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film could've benefited from another 15 or 20 minutes of detail and nuance. What's there, though, is strong, thoughtful and disturbing.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The documentary offers a compelling overview of the case, but Bar-Lev spends too much time painting Paterno as a victim and scapegoat. That advocacy doesn't sit well.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Amir Bar-Lev offers a typically gripping and thoughtful take on the Penn State scandal.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Happy Valley . [lays] bare the broken heart of a community that believed that everything was perfect in a world that never is.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The novel, of course, is one of the towering achievements in literature, and this trivial movie has no idea what to do with it.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Christophe Beaucarne shoots the countryside, the baked goods, Gemma and Martin's playful dogs, and of course Arterton with sun-dappled rapture. No 19th-century novelist saw the world like this.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
As pure entertainment it certainly does the job, although much of the text's existential weight is lost in the process.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
The scenery's lovely and the bread-kneading surprisingly erotic.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
We are offered a handful of sketchy observations on the extent to which art either does or does not mimic life. These are, at best, unchallenging, and would have drawn barks of laughter from the derisive Flaubert.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
A nice little gem for anyone intrigued by the concept of having fun with a giant of 19th century literature.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Fans of "Madame Bovary" might enjoy the chance to nod knowingly at references to the novel, but that's not enough to sustain a feature .

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Underscores the notion that what we're watching isn't merely the life of a complicated woman, but rather the actions and choices of that woman as seen through a man's eyes and a man's judgment.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Anne Fontaine's Flaubert-inspired meta-pleasure Gemma Bovery takes as its subject the act of watching the lives around us - and of wishing those lives were literature.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Like Chabrol, Fontaine has a way of making you laugh, on an off, for 90 minutes, before leaving you feeling a little queasy from too much truth.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Arterton proves again that she has starrier magnetism in movies that slow down enough to appreciate it, even if she winds up as much a symbol as her own person.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Literary obsession proves to be a weak spine for this wry French drama.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
After a while, the film feels more like a cute conceit that hasn't really been developed further. It's intriguing, and very well-acted, but empty.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
How is it possible that such blatant male wish fulfillment came from a female director and a graphic novel by a woman, writer-artist Posy Simmonds?

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The whole contrivance falls flat in the end.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A somewhat reserved but sensual and gratifying movie that finds and polishes connections between literature and the screen while further catapulting the wonderful British actress Gemma Arterton several notches up the ladder toward international stardom.

Name : Jay Weissberg / Alias : Variety
The script flattens the main characters and makes one nostalgic for Flaubert's observational acumen.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Laden with witty ironies, the film by Anne Fontaine suggests men may not play exactly the roles they think they do in women's lives.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
A tad too slapstick and not nearly modern enough in its social sensibilities to offer a truly updated version of Madame Bovary, Gemma Bovery still has its charms .

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is the first Fontaine movie I've seen that qualifies as lightweight.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
A transmogrified Flaubert, recast, upturned and rich with observational and satirical contemporary details.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Think of "Gemma Bovery" as an airy puff pastry, dripping with honey.