Praise:

Like a screenwriter, Nadas fills each scene with a stock cinematic style: The setting, then a character enters stage left, then some dialogue, then cut to another scene. The sketch-like episodes end abruptly with sudden directorial cuts, giving the work a jagged, nervous quality. Nadas's experimental style requires deep concentration at times to follow the train of thought, but the poetic quality of his descriptions and lyrical sensuality relentlessly pull the reader along through this modern fairy tale.

—Lucy Mallows, The Budapest Sun

Nadas has succeeded in translating from an essentially visual medium into a verbal one a sort of mood and perspective on reality which is pregnant with meaning, symbol, and portent. From a technical point of view, I judge the work to be a success.

— The New Presence

A Lovely Tale of Photography is an abstract and elliptical tale, which is indeed lovely in parts. The book is subtitled "A film novella," and its quirky structure suggests a wander through an album containing sequential photographs without, perhaps, sequential meaning . . . When the comedy really comes through, though, it is delivered in a wonderfully grotesque style, mixing fairy tale and fantasy to subvert the psychoanalytic intensity.

— The Prague Post

Rejecting the conventions of traditional storytelling, Nadas has fashioned what he calls a "film novella," which proceeds, not by linear narration, but by rapid jump cuts between highly stylized and fragmented scenes. Gone too are conventional "rounded" characters, replaced by disembodied voices and aesthetic shells without even a semblance of depth. This experimental form gives Nadas the freedom to pursue the true goal of the novella — not the development of a story or the examination of a character, but the elaboration of a number of philosophical themes and reflections.

— Ihor Junyk, The Chicago Review

A Lovely Tale is prey to mood; it is interesting and irritating, evocative and pompous, but short enough, definitely, to make it worth sitting through this strange film of words.

— Paul McRandle, Brainwashed.com