A masterful accomplishment...teems with its own sense of life, crackles with daring, walks the tightrope between satire and pathos with a rare assuredness.

Very much a fully realized cinematic experience. John Turturro, even if you have to act less, be sure to direct more, and often.

Everything falls into place and seems exactly right: the brisk tempo, the crisp, witty performances, the slightly sooty touch.

Few movies are as eloquent in their performances and their art direction.

John Turturro's farce about life and theater that is by turns elegant and bawdy, but always transfixing.

Self-satisfied -- an undisciplined brat of a film.

A gloriously giddy movie about theater, love and artifice, an unabashed art film.

The true strength of the film lies in its vast ensemble of actors.

Summons the stock characters of behind-the-scenes theater stories and affectionately invests them with new life.

Often elegant, at times frustratingly uneven, comedy that is hopelessly in love with theatre, poetry, and -- for once -- marriage.

Like a thick slice of ham - tasty, elegantly prepared and served - that aspires to be gourmet fare but in the end turns out to be only half-baked.

Turturro tricks you into thinking there's magic realism streaming through this ode to art and commited love - despite there being little magic and not a trace of reality to speak of.

Beneath the noisy, farcical surface of John Turturro's Illuminata is a thoughtful and unusually mature meditation on love.

Susan Sarandon has never looked better in her 29-year screen career than she does here.