The movie is intelligently directed by Joel Schumacher (…) Isabella Rossellini is the key to everything. She is so huggable in this movie, so funny, so sweet, that she brings sunshine into scenes that might otherwise seem contrived (…) Rossellini has the role in Cousins that was played by Marie-Christine Barrault in Cousin, Cousine, the warmhearted 1975 French comedy that inspired this Hollywood remake. Both actresses share some of the same qualities: sunny good humor and instinctive warmth in a merry, zaftig package. And they both have particularly winning smiles (…) We don’t really believe what’s happening — adultery is never this simple, and seldom this life-affirming — but the movie gets away with murder because it’s funny, because the dialogue has been written with an ear for the funny things people say, especially when they’re being serious, and because of Rossellini. — Roger Ebert, 1989.