In the USA, the film did not achieve a commercial release, and apart from a few restricted theatrical screenings it only became generally available when it was issued on DVD (2005). It did however attract a few appreciative reviews. One indirectly addressed the charge that the film was outdated: "Alain Resnais's dazzling madcap musical ... makes the grim preoccupations of a younger generation appear rather conventional". Another reinforced the point that the film was "a buoyantly entertaining example of everything old made new again. ...It's glamorous, funny, suspenseful, anchored in human nature and profoundly silly all at once". One of the strongest defences of the film was made by Jonathan Rosenbaum, who concluded with the following description: "an elegant, funny, creepy, soulful, and formally exquisite period operetta that demonstrates a keen sense of how suffocating polite society can be and how persistent desire is in spite of it. In short, the key themes of the Surrealist movement".