Robert Koehler introduces Strass as the twentieth film in the Dogme movement. At a drama school, a film crew follows a teacher whose method turns his students into subjects of an exercise in power. The camera adopts the form of a documentary, then makes the boundary between observation and performance increasingly uncertain.
Variety praises the satire of acting schools, the energy of the ensemble and the way the mock documentary continually shifts between the real and the performed. The Dogme constraints feed the story rather than becoming a mere technical exercise.
For the magazine, the film ranks among the movement's most accomplished works. This international reading already identifies a thread in Vincent Lannoo's cinema: an image may look spontaneous while concealing a highly precise construction.