Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote a positive review, describing the film as "manic, carnivalesque, and treating death as a minor (and temporary) inconvenience" and commends "Kusturica's convincing portrayal of his homeland as a social and architectural ruin, where everything is either falling apart or overbuilt in misbegotten grandiosity". O'Hehir concludes with "Kusturica strikes a half-ironic tone throughout this overcrowded, cacophonous masterpiece that’s almost impossible to categorize. In the tradition of Eastern European film, he’s satirizing the conventions of rural magic realism at least as much as he’s embracing them. But there’s nothing cynical or cold-hearted about "Black Cat, White Cat". Like the waves of geese, pigs, goats, dogs and cats that sometimes threaten to overwhelm the human characters, it is recklessly, indescribably alive".