Elles

So I decided to visit the French Film Festival in Prague and chose a film that in places quite explicitly showed two stories of two young college girls from Paris. But it wasn’t as brutal as it might have seemed at first glance. Małgorzata Szumowska has chosen a subtle approach in terms of shots, so I was sometimes saying to myself that had the camera moved a few millimeters to the side, this film would have become a soft porn flick… or just a porn flick. On the other hand, I expected a more interesting story. For example, I didn’t understand the character portrayed by Juliette Binoche at all. I understand that she is an artist, just like a lot of French people. But her family or some of her behavior was completely out of it. And the ending seemed to fade into nothing. Why was the family there at all? And in the end, I also realized that she didn’t even finish writing her article in the film... even though she pours so much effort into it during an hour and a half of the running time. (24/11/2014)

La liaison franco-polonaise dans le cinéma fonctionne, c’est une chose déjà maintes fois établie et qu’il n’est plus nécessaire de mentionner. Ça se confirme encore une fois en 2012 avec la singulière réalisatrice polonaise Szumowska. Son film précédent m’avait laissé sur des impressions mitigées et, cette fois, elle pousse encore plus loin le caractère ouvert dans certaines scènes. Juliette Binoche et Anaïs Demoustier sont excellentes comme à leur habitude. Le scénario mériterait d'être peaufiné, mais, de façon générale, on peut dire que la qualité est au rendez-vous. (21/08/2012)