The critical response to
Better Things was positive, with the film reviewed as Film of the Month in
Sight and Sound magazine, film of the week in
Le Monde, chosen as one of
Film Comment Selects best films of 2009, and shortlisted for
The Guardian's First Film Award 2009. It was, however, also attacked in some quarters for its supposed bleakness and unrelenting tone. Many favourable critics responded to what they found to be the film's visual beauty, and an innovative cinematic reworking of the British
Social Realist form.
Variety compared the film in different ways to works by American photographer
Nan Goldin (particularly her
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency), and the British directors
Lynne Ramsay and
Alan Clarke. Other critics drew visual and thematic connections to
Romanticism, noting imagery "reminiscent of
Gainsborough or
Constable – to grandiloquent, tempestuous shots evoking
Caspar David Friedrich, and the bold style of other late
Romantics".
Vilhelm Hammershøi is similarly referenced, as well as "the film’s most vivid and direct quotation – that of
Henry Wallis’
Chatterton". Much was made of the film's perceived stylistic innovations that moved away from the traditional British Social Realist modes of
Loach or
Leigh whilst still rendering avowedly realist characters and subject matter. With
Better Things Hopkins was positioned as part of a 'British New Wave' of directors, alongside
Steve McQueen and others, demonstrating that there was a 'new generation of British cinema coming to the boil'. This thread was later taken up in New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, with a detailed analysis of contemporary British realist cinema that used
Better Things as a point of entry in discussing how 'the likes of Hopkins,
Andrea Arnold and
Lynne Ramsay can be seen to adopt an approach that places a greater emphasis on the poetic potentials of realist imagery at the expense of social-political didacticism'. Other critics found a strong vein of social intent in the film and emphasised its uncommon vision of life in present day rural communities; in hailing a 'steelily impressive debut' the
Radio Times stated that "Duane Hopkins's first feature is a compelling and highly credible insight into the deterioration of life in rural Britain".
Better Things won several awards and nominations internationally following its premiere at
Cannes, including the
FIPRESCI Critics Award for Best Film at
Stockholm International Film Festival. ==Awards and nominations==