"Kelly Reno gives one of the three greatest performances by a kid (next to Anna Paquin in The Piano and Victoire Thivisol in Ponette). Watch him be his own stuntman on an island with no hospital, a production with no net. Kelly Reno is a beast of an actor, and then controls beasts himself. The present crop of abs-obsessed, fake-tough actors should tremble before him. Director of photography Caleb Deschanel shoots this movie effortlessly but still drenches it in beauty."

"This is such a simple and funny movie that tells what is at its core a very sad story about a young woman trapped in Communist Czechoslovakia. The actors and faces that Milos Forman cast in all the roles are fantastic and real, and the young piano player’s tired and fed-up parents are two of the funniest, most subtle characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. This is one of my favorite movies to turn people on to, since very few people have ever seen it."