“A delicate, atmospheric screen adaptation of a contemporary Portuguese novel, A Bee in the Rain traces the dissolution of an upper-class couple's marriage. The end of their marriage symbolizes, to an extent, the end of an era: the impossibility of continuing to live with lies and pretensions about social class or position which are contradicted by the visual evidence of a decaying mansion and untilled fields. Rarely has a sound film made more eloquent use of silence; the lack of dialogue or communication takes on an oppressive weight, as it stands for the inability of these characters to stop the collapse of their carefully cloistered world” (Richard Peña). Brian Baxter, writing in Film, notes that A Bee in the Rain “has nearly the impact of Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc and one may imagine that this director is one of the greats that Lopes studied during his two-year stay in Paris; others were obviously Buñuel (the film is austere, yet passionate in its attitude to class) (and) Dreyer....”