on rotten tomatoes the film holds an approval rating 64% based on 61 reviews. "detroit free press" said: "the strength of this movie is how it starts as a standard whodunit only to become something else: a cunning chabrol study of incest and old money peppered with a wicked sense of humor." "sfgate" remarked "chabrol's examination of intergenerational guilt takes awhile to arrive at the station, but the characters and dialogue... are sophisticated and properly witty." wesley morris in "the boston globe" said: "if it's not vintage claude chabrol, it's at least vintage mediocre claude chabrol. his umpteenth housebound suspicion-fest is one of his more inexplicable adventures in secrets and scandal." "slant magazine" called it "a disappointment", and added "chabrol has always been hung-up on bourgeois rituals, hypocrisies, and idiosyncrasies, but every observation here is mundane or simply inconsequential to the film’s larger and severely undervalued dialectic of a so-called "perpetual present."