"Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane (Michel Feller) leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine (Clotilde de Bayser); Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A quietly haunting game of chutes and ladders ensues as these two nearly lost souls awaken to their true feelings and futilely attempt to regain their former lovers. Denis Lenoir's attentive camera gazes with cool compassion at a scenario that typifies Assayas's fascination with impossibly fraught emotional entanglements." (Gavin Smith) "(Like Disorder,) Winter's Child again works on a relay system. A current-an emotional through-line-of bottomless blue funk seems to pass from (character to character). With its sustained chord of pain and regret, Winter's Child has a bleak grandeur all its own." (Kent Jones (condensed))