In The Guardian, the film was characterised as "a raw, unsanitised character study, in which Holiday is both combative and vulnerable, coy and revolutionary: a fiery, foul-mouthed thrill-seeker who never sacrificed her integrity. This is all the more refreshing considering that Holiday’s estate ... came on board as producers." The NME review concluded: "Billie never truly gets under its subject’s skin, leaving her motivation largely unexplored. The nearest we get is when the musician herself, asked why so many jazz greats die young, replies: 'We try to live 100 days in one day.' Billie Holiday lived so fast that few biographers appear able to keep with up her, but Erskine and Kuehl’s combined effort amounts to a long, loving look from a distance. And when your subject is as magnificent as Billie Holiday, that's enough."
