Coup de Chance (2024)

Direction: Woody Allen
Country: USA

The prolific New Yorker Woody Allen returned to Paris for his 50th film, Coup de Chance, an anemic romance that morphs into an uninvolving detective comedy. With a fully French cast led  by Lou de Laâge and Melvil Poupaud as Fanny and Jean Fournier, respectively, the film follows them as a married couple whose relationship is suddenly thrown into turmoil when Fanny encounters Alain Aubert (Niels Schneider), a former high school friend and eternal admirer.

While the themes are recurrent in Allen’s filmography, the execution leaves much to be desired as the elements don’t quite mesh. Delivered without magic or brilliance, this is an ordinary masquerade superficially plotted, sloppily directed, unevenly acted, and whose attempting humor falls flat. While the conventional dialogue and mannered staging are quintessentially Allen-esque, they fail to elevate the film beyond its artificial Parisian backdrop, depicted with excessive sharpness and color. 

Coup de Chance is Woody Allen at his weakest, presenting every emotion and action as false, idiotic or frivolous. The film's saving grace lies in its incredibly groovy jazz soundtrack, featuring trumpeter Nat Adderley performing two of his own pieces: “Fortune’s Child” and “In the Bag”, along with a wonderful rendition of Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island”.

The Animal Kingdom (2023)

Direction: Thomas Cailley
Country: France

French director Thomas Cailley, known for Love at First Fight (2014), directs and co-writes his sophomore feature, The Animal Kingdom, a hybrid sci-fi drama that balances pitch-perfect detail with a poignant sense of loss and restlessness. This Kafkaesque fable delves into themes of human-animal mutations, exclusion, and father-son relationships with tremendous ambition, resulting in a film that may strike some viewers as poetic while others may find it irrational and far-fetched.

The story follows François (Romain Duris) and his 16-year-old son, Emile (Paul Kircher), who have recently lost their wife and mother, respectively, due to an inexplicable phenomenon that gradually transforms humans into animals. Matters escalate when Emile begins to undergo the same transformation. The premise is imaginative and intriguingly uncanny, yet the execution maintains a palpable connection to reality. 

Cailley demonstrates audacity in both style and form, crafting a controlled staging that delves into themes of unethical discrimination and the mysterious ties between humanity and nature. The film serves as a metaphorically adjusted reflection of contemporary society, presenting a vital and sometimes violent friction between reality and fiction. The Oscar-caliber makeup used to portray the transformed characters, along with the spellbinding forests and landscapes of the Landes de Gascogne, contribute to a visually stunning experience.
While The Animal Kingdom may not achieve perfection in all its aspects, it carries feverish delicacy and magnetic charisma.

The Taste of Things (2024)

Direction: Tran Anh Hung
Country: France

Under the direction of Viatnamese-born French director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya, 1993; Cyclo, 1995), Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel deliver stellar performances, showcasing an almost transcendental chemistry in The Taste of Things, a meticulously crafted historical romance suffused with gastronomical delights. Adapted from The Passionate Epicure by Swiss author Marcel Rouff, the film unfolds within the walls of a castle in Anjou, centering on the intimate relationship between gourmet restaurant owner Dodin Bouffant (loosely based on Anthelme Brillat-Savarin) and his cherished chef Eugénie, who serves him devotedly for two decades.

Slowly cooked, this bittersweet cinematic offering invites moments of profound empathy through its well-drawn characters. Delicate, understated, and occasionally poignant, each scene is captured with constant care and refinement, resembling colorful, realistic paintings. The dishes  tantalize the palate but, despite the passion of cooking and love, the film is laid-back, occasionally feeling overly staged and lacking intrigue, risking monotony across its 134-minute duration. However, Hung balances these potential shortcomings with narrative simplicity and visual splendor.

The Taste of Things may not move mountains, but all in there is grace and melancholic bliss, making it a sensory experience worth savoring.

The Crime is Mine (2023)

Direction: François Ozon
Country: France

In François Ozon’s latest film, The Crime is Mine, the narrative follows Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a struggling young actress accused of murdering a renowned producer who had sexually assaulted her during an interview. Defended in court by her best friend and roommate, the unemployed lawyer Pauline (Rebecca Marder), they initially bask in fame until the iconic silent cinema actress, Odette Chaumette (a scene-stealing performance by Isabelle Huppert), claims responsibility for the crime.

Ozon, infusing the jazzy vibes of the 1930s, adapts a play from that era, creating a whimsical, feminist period farce filled with droll humor and a touch of charm. The film takes a lighthearted approach to murder, capturing the era's spirit through an abundance of color and a joyful atmosphere conveyed in briskly-paced, effortlessly chaotic scenes.

This stylized fusion of theater and cinema, infused with social satire, sarcasm, plenty of lies, and a blend of wacky and goofy moments, explores the burlesque side of screwball comedies. Drawing inspiration from the works of Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra, and Sacha Guitry, Ozon mounts the film with a refreshingly old-fashioned flair that doesn't come off as an ironic throwback or shameless nostalgia pandering. The production design is lavish and detailed, complemented by outstanding supporting performances from Fabrice Luchini and André Dussollier.

Less brilliant than 8 Women (2002), The Crime is Mine is performed with an impressive suppression of passion, but never losing sight of more serious aspects akin to today’s world. The elements may feel familiar, even hokum, but Ozon approaches the material with enthusiasm. The film ultimately rewards those seeking a light, feel-good piece of entertainment. 

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Direction: Justine Triet
Country: France

Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall, is a dense courtroom drama filled with intriguing and revelatory developments. The film, brilliantly directed by Justine Triet (Age of Panic, 2013; Sybil, 2019) and co-written with close collaborator Arthur Harari (Onoda: 10,000 in the Jungle, 2021), stars Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter, a German writer living in a secluded chalet in the mountains of France. She becomes the prime suspect in her writer husband’s mysterious death, despite persisting doubts about whether it was an accident, suicide, or murder. To complicate matters, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), the couple's visually impaired 11-year-old son and the sole witness to the case, changes his testimony.

With a fine-tuned script that materializes in an impeccable staging, this cooly absorbing, nonchalantly cynical family drama presents three-dimensional characters who hold our attention throughout. Its real masterstroke is the shroud of ambiguity that erupts as the narrative dissects the fragile marital relationship between the couple. Many details and discrepancies must be considered during the investigation: a past accident involving their son caused guilt and resentment; the literary couple has disparate professional successes; and Sandra, being bisexual, had a few flings with women that motivated jealousy.

Hüller, who first gained notoriety in Mare Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016), exudes dazzling charisma and oozes class with her performance, while Triet is at the top of her game, creating a precise, intelligent portrait of a free woman whose confidence and composure never seem shaken. The close-ups are penetratingly sharp, and the dialogues are absorbing, allowing the film to breeze through its two-hour-and-thirty-minute running time despite the weightiness of a psychological drama woven with incredible richness. Anatomy of a Fall is easily the most attractive and entertaining courtroom drama in recent years and represents Triet’s best work.

The Origin of Evil (2023)

Direction: Sébastien Marnier
Country: France 

The Origin of Evil is a petty comedic thriller with an ostentatious profusion of pretenses. Following Faultless (2016) and School’s Out (2018), writer-director Sébastien Marnier delivers another story centered on class defectors that lures one in at an early stage, keeping the audience on edge with a tight mysterious grasp until everything is suddenly revealed. Afterward, it falls into pure thriller routine with no smarts.

Equipped with a great cast but in need of better editing, the film follows Nathalie (Laure Calamy), a modest young woman who decides to meet her estranged, wealthy father (Jacques Weber) for the first time. Battling illness, this man lives controlled by his wife (Dominique Blanc), a compulsive consumerist; his arrogant daughter (Doria Tillier), who took over his businesses; and a constantly vigilant housekeeper (Véronique Ruggia). Although highly caricatured, not a single character is likable. 

Affected by the imposter syndrome, this is the kind of film where you cannot find a trace of honesty, and you know it beforehand. The director employs a bunch of deceits as narrative propellers, but the film, paralyzed by aloofness, runs out of ideas fairly quickly, leaving us with a general feeling that not everything is quite clicking the way it could have. I found myself struggling to find the laughs while observing avid women battling one another fiercely for dominance and acceptance.

Madeleine Collins (2023)

Direction: Antoine Barraud
Country: France

Madeleine Collins, the latest feature by French director Antoine Barraud (Portrait of the Artist, 2014), is an ambitious psychological drama that borders on Hitchcockian thriller. It was co-written with Héléna Klotz (Atomic Age, 2012), and stars Virginie Efira (Benedetta, 2021; Revoir Paris, 2022), who couldn’t have been a better choice for the leading role. With great talent, she embodies Judith, a fragile woman - more generous than treacherous - whose double life gradually disintegrates as her multiple identities are unveiled.

The film involves the viewer in a labyrinth of pitfalls and pretenses that misleads before eventually shedding some light on a story that keeps throbbing with twists. They progressively explain the confusion of its earlier parts, which make you search incessantly for logical grounds. The success, however, comes partially from Barraud, who keeps the pace moving and manages to disconcert at regular intervals while directing with a skillful sense of suspense. 

Elevated by a great performance, this tale only seems possible on screen, but the uncanny undertones of humanity and perversity infused by the protagonist keep us centered on her self-created nightmare. With that said, the whole thing feels familiar, moodwise, without ever veering into cliché.

Full Time (2023)

Direction: Eric Gravel
Country: France

French writer-director Eric Gravel (Crash Test Aglaé, 2017) deserves all the praise he gets for Full Time, an excellent sophomore feature and sharp social observation of extraordinary impact. Strong in its commitment, the film also owes a lot to Laure Calamy (Only the Animals, 2019; My Donkey, My Lover & I, 2020), whose exceptional performance clarifies the reality of Julie, a single mother who struggles to raise her two children in the countryside while working in a demanding five-star Parisian hotel. 

The days start very early for Julie, who risks everything to change her life. While managing her limited time to go to a job interview at a distinguished market research company, she meets with considerable difficulties: a general strike, a complaining nanny, an inflexible supervisor, and an irresponsible ex-husband that leaves her financially tied up. Trapped in a hectic lifestyle, it’s the people and the city itself that don’t let her breathe. But as a strong and determined fighter, she admirably pushes back against adversity. And that’s the richness of a film that many people will be able to relate to. 

Gravel’s realism finds the right pacing, and the taut script, although precise and controlled, is implemented with dynamic camera movements and an efficient editing that help extract tension from the real-world scenes. Designed to provoke anxiety, Full Time is more gripping than most of the recent thrillers I’ve seen lately. And how could one not admire a woman who, constantly on the edge, refuses to collapse and keeps fighting for a better tomorrow?

Stars at Noon (2023)

Direction: Claire Denis
Country: France / Panama / other

French director Claire Denis, who gave us unique moments of cinema with Beau Travail (1999), White Material (2009) and High Life (2018), based herself on the 1986 novel The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson for this new drama/thriller of the same name. In it, a young American journalist, Trish (Margaret Qualley), is stranded in Nicaragua with no money and no passport. To survive, she resorts to a police subtenant (Nick Romano) and the vice-minister of tourism (Stephan Proaño), to whom she offers sexual favors in exchange for money. With important elections approaching, they promise to help her leave the country but with no practical effect. That’s when she meets Daniel (Joe Alwyn), an English businessman working for an oil company. This man could be her last chance or her ruin. 

Stretched to two hours and a half, this monomaniacal film is sporadically intriguing, yet its overweening cynicism leaves a curdled aftertaste. There’s lack of detail in the political and corporational considerations and the romance is too indolent to convince. The actors, who are not to blame, sink into the swamp of good intentions because the film sort of trivializes what would be a terrible reality. 

By generating some cheesy and sticky do-or-die tension, Denis makes it hard for us to take this story seriously. The thrills are not strong enough to push us to the edge of our seat. The one-dimensional characterization and a dead-earnest execution soon put an unusual spin on a story where nearly every beam that strives to hold it together collapses. But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that there's nothing here we haven't seen before.

Scarlet (2023)

Direction: Pietro Marcello
Country: France / Italy / other

Following the critical acclaim of Martin Eden (2019), Italian director Pietro Marcello, who moved to Paris in 2020, has a hard time giving a meaningful expression to Scarlet, failing authenticity. His newest film is a gorgeously photographed but inept screen adaptation of the 1923 novel Scarlet Sails, one of the most known by Russian author Alexander Grin. 

In the aftermath of the First World War, Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry), returns to his small rural village on the Picardy coast, to learn that his beloved wife died suddenly, leaving him a little girl called Juliette. Madame Adeline (Noémie Lvovsky), the farm owner who raised the girl, accepts him as a handyman. The years go by, not without difficulties. One day, Juliette (Juliette Jouan is a revelation) finds love, when an adventurous pilot (Louis Garrel) descends from the sky. 

Scarlet doesn't melt, but it drifts. Oscillating between historical realism and moony tale, the film still arouses some early curiosity that, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. Numerous plot holes and gray areas make it hard for us to get attached to the characters. Lacking nerve, this inefficiently executed story never reaches the required emotional power to work as a whole. 

The film’s musical parts are inconsequential and, for their brevity, ludicrously whimsical; the pedestrian romance is without passion; the sixth sense and witchcraft suggestions feel like jokes; and the archival footage - with colorized and sepia frames - creates a completely redundant, even distracting tonal mishmash. The cinematography by Marco Graziaplena is your best bet, but it’s on the bottom that this film sins.

More Than Ever (2023)

Direction: Emily Atef
Country: France 

In Emily Atef’s death-related drama More Than Ever, Vicky Krieps invests passionately in her performance, releasing a subtle discomfort that comes between exasperation and swallowed tears. This film is certainly a strange experience if we think that it marked Gaspard Ulliel’s last performance after the tragic skiing accident that took his life in 2022. He was 37. 

Hélène (Krieps), who is in her early thirties, and Mathieu (Ulliel) try to organize their Parisian life after the former is diagnosed with a rare, progressive, and ultimately terminal disease called IPF - idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Their love is strong but the visibly depressed Hélène, for her own sake, decides to make a trip to Norway and stay with a blogger (Bjørn Floberg) she met online. 

Between Paris and the Norwegian fjords, a slow agony unfolds with quietude but also luminous hope of reaching a higher state of mind. In each shot, Atef breathes sensitivity, but her approach suffers from a stiffness that is compared with the romantic stillness that affects the protagonist's spiritual process. 

Profoundly human and saddled with a mix of somber and limpid energy, More Than Ever is, in some measure, a slightly conventional work that could have explored its characters a bit deeper. Still, we can’t help feeling sorry for this strong, searching young woman, whose life changed so abruptly. Not necessarily bowled over by what I was seeing, this is not a dislikable drama.

Winter Boy (2023)

Direction: Christophe Honoré
Country: France 

Christophe Honoré's fifteenth feature, Winter Boy, is a heavy and uninspired semi-autobiographical drama starring Paul Kircher as Lucas, a high school student whose existence becomes unbearably painful after a family tragedy. It’s a personal look at the director’s grievous emotional state in the months following the death of his father, and the desperate attempt to find comfort, usually in the wrong places. The director also stars as Lucas’ father, a reflection of his own. 

Often shot in claustrophobic close-up, the film is a full miss in its vain attempt to blend the dreamy and the depressing. Juliette Binoche, who plays Lucas’ helpless  mother, is a shadow of herself; her superb acting qualities are wasted here. 

The director of Love Songs (2007) and The Beautiful Person (2008) can’t quite get a handle on this cumbersome mess. Winter Boy is stilted, with deficient dynamics and questionable choices of monologues in front of the camera and explanatory voice-over. Losing energy along the way, what should have been done with melancholy grace, ends up in tedious disgrace. The strange mixture of vulnerability and strength that Honoré wanted to convey never convinces, and the film ends ridiculously, in flagrant hypocrisy.

Smoking Causes Coughing (2023)

Direction: Quentin Dupieux
Country: France 

Whether you love or hate his movies, Quentin Dupieux is a singular filmmaker who is not afraid to experiment. His new fantastical and absurdist film, Smoking Causes Coughing, is satirical in a way that is both disarming and perplexing. This gory, outlandish superhero comedy with some big laughs is centered on the Tobacco Force, the coolest Avengers unit comprised of Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Mercury (Jean-Pascal Zadi), Methanol (Vincent Lacoste), Ammonia (Oulaya Amara), and Benzene (Gilles Lellouche). Although saviors of humanity, they struggle with emotional problems themselves and egotistic instincts. But one thing bonds them tightly: the love for grim, scary stories.

The five vigilantes led by Chief Didier (Alain Chabat), literally an old rat with drooling problems, is put to a test when Lizardin (Benoit Poelvoorde), the Emperor of Evil, decides to annihilate the Earth.

More of a sketch film willing to entertain adult audiences with the spirit of TV comedies of the ‘70s than anything else, Smoking Causes Coughing bears a horde of pop curiosities and caustic yet valid social commentary about saving our planet and the dangers of compromising technology (the presence of advanced robots - one suicidal and one retarded - is not by chance). To spice things up, he interlaces the droll mockery with disgustingly bloody scenes. Certain jokes have a forced quality, but there's something gleefully self-aware about them. 

Dupieux’s antics are provocative, psychedelic and unapologetic. His film, so well titled, so funny, so pathetic and so bizarre, is also so memorable for all that.

The Night of the 12th (2023)

Direction: Dominik Moll
Country: France 

German-born French director Dominik Moll (With a Friend Like Harry, 2000; Only the Animals, 2019) confirms an extraordinary maturity in The Night of the 12th, painting with grippingly realistic touches and surgical precision the scenario of a crime investigation and the mental struggle that consumes two cops. The film, a slow-burning noir thriller that alerts for femicide, was adapted from a 50-page passage of the book 18.3 - Une année à la PJ (2020) by Pauline Guéna. 

With a straight-line narration, this funeral fable turns our attention to brutal violence against women, rising above common trappings with the help of carefully modulated performances by Bastien Bouillon and Bouli Lanners. The former is Yohan, the newly appointed judiciary police captain in Grenoble, who gets obsessed with the case of a young woman burned alive in a small town; the latter is Marceau, an impulsive veteran officer going through a painful divorce.

Moll and his regular collaborator Gilles Marchand co-wrote the film with seriousness, making it less immediately stunning and sometimes hardly pleasurable to watch. Yet, this is a considerably impactful and realistic cinematic experience. The inexhaustible mystery persists in a story that, even wholly absorbing, is full of blank uneasiness. It can be frustrating to follow these cops, both locked in their solitude and lost in their leads.

Other People's Children (2023)

Direction: Rebecca Zlotowski
Country: France 

In her most accomplished work to date, Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central, 2013; An Easy Girl, 2019) encapsulates more than just a simple romance. Pruning rather than emphasizing, the plot is a realistic evocation of motherhood as experienced by Rachel (Virginie Efira), a caring 40-year-old middle-school teacher who desires a child of her own but ends up deeply attached to the five-year-old daughter (Callie Ferreira-Goncalves) of his new partner (Roschdy Zem). When things go in an unexpected direction, it’s necessary to come to terms with her own feelings. After all, a separation means two losses, not just one. Emotionally damaged and poked with unfairness, Rachel opts to remain in the background because she’s not the confrontational type.

The topic, rarely addressed in cinema, is treated with luminous candor and simplicity by Zlotowski, whose attentive gaze is empowered by Efira’s performance. The Belgian-born actress continues to astound with the depth of her characterizations - recent examples are Benedetta (2021), Waiting for Bojangles (2021), and Revoir Paris (2022). 

Other People’s Children is a tone poem of a film that entangles tenderness and cruelty within a mix of refined classicism and breezy modernity. The emotional waves are never allowed to erode the unflinching truthfulness of the film’s insights. Accordingly, with intelligent nuance molding storytelling, this is a drama that, in the end, reaches our hearts.

Revoir Paris (2022)

Direction: Alice Winocour
Country: France 

In her newest film, writer-director Alice Winocour (Augustine, 2012; Disorder, 2015) offers a modestly engaging account of severe PTSD and a possible path to recovery. Revoir Paris is a fictionalized story about a terrorist attack and the profound marks left on those who survived, undeniably bringing to mind the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in the French capital.

Three months after experiencing the attack in a Paris bistro, Mia (Virginie Efira) remains in limbo, a stranger to herself and to the city. By returning to the place where all happened and where she was hidden for nearly two hours, this Russian translator makes an effort to remember the details that will allow her to heal and move forward. The taciturn accumulation of emotions finds some illumination in the optimism of Thomas (Benoit Magimel), another survivor who, on that grievous night, was celebrating his birthday. 

Circumspectly shot, this heartbreaking yet timid description of how to overcome trauma is centered on the victims, not the murderers. The images are poignant, the sound is effective, and Efira is striking, but after some truly frightening scenes, the film falls into a kind of torpor that has its reason to exist. Each character is assigned a function that works within the dramatic construction.

By turns moving and horrifying, Revoir Paris might not be a massive hit but manages to carve out an identity.

The Innocent (2023)

Direction: Louis Garrel
Country: France

Louis Garrel, the son of esteemed director Philippe Garrel for whom he has acted several times over the years (Regular Lovers, 2005; Jealousy, 2013; Le Grand Chariot, 2023), wrote, directed and starred in The Innocent, his fourth feature and most rewarding film so far. This project took five years to mature and bears a very personal stamp as it was inspired by his mother, the actress Brigitte Sy, who actually married a prisoner in the penitentiary where she was giving theater workshops. Louis was 18 when that occurred.

Here, he impersonates the taciturn Abel, who freaks out when informed about what his mother (Anouk Grinberg) is planning to do. In panic, he starts to investigate all the moves of his suspicious father-in-law (Roschdy Zem) with the help of his best friend, Clemence (Noémie Merlant). 

This romantic comedy drama, brilliantly served with a slice of heist thriller on the side, takes a somewhat familiar concept and applies it to the story of mother and son. The well-crafted plot entertains without upsetting, and the film is carried out with remarkable ease. It's all very charming (thanks to the fantastic ensemble cast and some decent chemistry between them), gloriously dramatic (the scene at the restaurant is memorable) and, at some point, thrilling. Garrel ultimately finds the perfect equilibrium between genres, guaranteeing narrative fluidity at all times.

Narrative cleverness and adroit editing sustain us through a story that, being irremediably elemental, simple and light, succeeds in its efforts as it is also graced with a typically super performance by Merlant and an effective direction by Garrel. Delivering that pure pleasure of cinema we thought already lost, they will put a smile on your face.

The Worst Ones (2023)

Direction: Lise Akoka, Romane Guéret
Country: France

Embracing a docu-fiction style that works for most of its time, The Worst Ones - the first feature from directors Lise Akoka and Romane Guéret - is designed to trigger emotional responses with disarmingly honest portrayals. It’s a sympathetic, interestingly structured mise en abyme carried by young non-professional actors. The film, which took more than three years to come to life, is an extension of their 2016 short film Chasse Royale.

The directors focus is the backstage of a painstaking casting process (they actually assessed hundreds of youngsters’ acting improvisations) and subsequent filming in the underprivileged Picasso neighborhood located in the Northern French city of Boulogne-Sur-Mer. Four teenagers - considered the worst ones by the local people - are chosen by a questionable Belgian film director, Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh). They are Jessy (Loïc Pech), who had problems with the law; Ryan (Timéo Mahaut), who lives with his sister and never cries; the moody Maylis (Mélina Vanderplancke), who is not sure if she wants to participate in the film; and Lily (Mallory Wanecque), who earned a bad reputation at school after losing her little brother to cancer. Despite the interesting characters, I found the director to be the most intriguing of them all. 

The film’s main victories come from its magnificent ability to move the focus from children to children captured in their own environment, and its unwillingness to fall back on convenient labels and the usual soap operatics. Yet, there are a few awkward moments that stem from the fabricated shooting scenes. Wanecque and Mahaut win us with their performances, and the worst become the best as their candor emerges in front of an observant camera that is avid at capturing their reactions, whether spontaneous or imposed.

One Fine Morning (2023)

Direction: Mia Hansen-Løve
Country: France 

In Mia Hansen-Løve’s romantic drama One Fine Morning, Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Colour, 2013; France, 2021) is Sandra Kienzler, a widowed, avid-for-love interpreter who finds herself at a serious emotional crossroads. She tries to cope with the anguish that stems from her father’s health deterioration and the joyful possibility of a new love. The film pulsates with desperate, even miserable passion as Sandra gets closer to Clément (Melvil Poupaud of Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale and Raul Ruiz’s Time Regained), a married old friend and cosmochemist who usually spends months away in Antarctica and the North Pole. They have one children each and their relationship is not without indecision and consecutive ups and downs.

Ingrained with melancholy and shot in 35 mm, the film doesn’t exactly take your breath away, but it’s not afraid to state that life can be often messy and unfulfilling. It’s a simple yet powerfully acted drama that flourishes because of the protagonists’ charisma. These two lonely souls manage to go beyond their existential ennui.

Hansen-Løve, who was partly inspired by her father’s illness and wrote the script when he was still alive, takes a more transparent approach in opposition to the more ambiguous tonalities of her last film, Bergman Island. One Fine Morning has a few floundering moments, especially those when illness is involved. And yet, with sorrowful tears in her eyes, Sandra keeps us connected with her irrepressible hope.

Saint Omer (2023)

Direction: Alice Diop
Country: France 

Inspired by the sinister true story of Fabienne Kakou, a mother with a good education sentenced in France in 2017 for infanticide, Saint Omer infuses motherhood, depression, and maleficent sorcery into a courtroom drama spiced with morbid witticisms. French director Alice Diop signs a complex and demanding first fiction film that doesn’t get too far from the documentary style that became her specialty (We, 2021; La Permanence, 2016). This one belongs to that kind of film where we make questions but are not given many answers.

Rama (Kayije Kagame) is an introspective novelist who gets deeply disturbed while attending the trial of a Senegalese woman, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda is an astounding revelation), accused of having killed her fifteen-month-old daughter. The case makes her reflect about her childhood and her cold mother, as well as her present pregnancy. 

The subject matter, already powerful by itself, is treated like a mordant Dostoyevskian crime story shrouded in ambiguous motivation. It is intriguing and promising but it may leave a feeling of incompleteness in some viewers. Fixed camera shots induce petrification and turn things even drier and icier while exerting a strange power of fascination. 

Saint Omer is visually strengthened by the sharp compositions of cinematographer Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019; Spencer, 2021). Even not as touching as it could be, this exquisitely acted film provides a guilty pleasure for those who like to dive into skepticism.