Thirty-six years after her debut as an actress, Sandrine Kiberlain is behind the camera for the first time. She took her time to write and direct A young girl who is well, a film linked to her personal history, her origins, and carried by the youth and grace of Rebecca Marder.
Paris summer 1942, Irène is preparing for the entrance exam to the conservatory of dramatic arts, overflowing with life and energy, she lives her passion for the theater without worrying about the rising threat.
“I’ve always wanted to talk about this time that I came from, which is the thing that I still don’t understand.”
Sandrine Kiberlainat franceinfo
Irene is Jewish. His father, André Marcon, does not want to believe that the France of Pétain will do what we know today, his grandmother, she is less naive when the Vichy regime imposes the yellow star.
With delicacy, Sandrine Kiberlain films this period by giving it an almost timeless dimension, we do not see a German uniform, the historical references are very limited, only this carelessness, this thirst for life of the young girl remains, before the disaster.
For his fourth film as a director, Edouard Baer makes an uncompromising declaration of love to actors who are his elders: Gérard Depardieu, Pierre Arditi, the late Jean-François Stévenin, Bernard Le Coq, Bernard Murat, Jackie Berroyer, and the youngest, François Damiens and Benoit Poelvoorde.
“Nostalgia is a way of preventing yourself from being alive, it’s laziness.”
Edward Baerat franceinfo
This band of males with substantial egos meet for a ritual, an annual lunch in a Parisian institution restaurant, during which the most recent is admitted into this aging cenacle.
It’s a theater, with its range of characters, its tirades and above all, this feeling that these men who overplay their past glory, suffer from not recognizing their weaknesses. Farewell Paris is touching, sometimes disturbing, but Edouard Baer swears he is not nostalgic.
In 2017, we loved the portrait of women from 20th Century Women. Mike Mills returns with Our children’s souls, black and white film in square format.
Joaquin Phoenix is a radio journalist who questions young people about their vision of the world, when his sister calls him for help to take care of his nephew whom he barely knows. Between the hyperactive 9-year-old boy, whose bipolar father is interned, and this solitary uncle, the relationship is a learning process strewn with pitfalls.
From California to New York, the duo gets used to each other, childhood is treated with its bright side and its dark side. Despite some heaviness, a beautiful film on transmission.