"In her new film, Helma Sanders-Brahms (Germany, Pale Mother, PFA 11/80, 6/83) explores mother-daughter relationships, in the confined space of a house by the sea and in the restricted time-span of about 24 hours. Isabelle (Brigitte Fossey) is a successful film actress whose five-year-old daughter Emily (Camille Raymond) is cared for by Paula and Charles (Hildegarde Knef and Ivan Desny), Isabelle's parents, while she is away making a film. Isabelle completes a film in Berlin and flies to the small town in Normandy where her parents live; her costar, Frederick (Hermann Treusch) follows her, and checks into a small hotel. That's the setting for a series of extraordinarily effective scenes in which the lives of Isabelle and her parents are dissected. Fossey is quite remarkable as Isabelle. So too is Hildegarde Knef, absent from the screen for ten years; her divided emotions toward her daughter are displayed with absolute conviction. The Future of Emily confirms Helma Sanders-Brahms as one of the top rank of German directors." David Stratton (Variety critic) for Filmex '85