On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 14 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.5/10.^[6] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[7]

The four lead actresses shared the best actress award and the film earned a special mention for its script at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival.^[8] The film was voted the third best Japanese film of 2015 in the Kinema Junpo poll of critics.^[9] Upon its release in the United States, Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote that "Hamaguchi is a genius of scene construction, turning the fierce poetry of painfully revealing and pugnaciously wounding dialogue into powerful drama that’s sustained by a seemingly spontaneous yet analytically precise visual architecture".^[10] He selected the film as one of the 10 best of 2016,^[11] and later as the best Japanese film of the 21st century.^[12] Vadim Rizov also held the latter opinion, saying, "The logline is that it’s a drama about five Japanese women charting their friendship, using duration to build character depth, and t