The week’s cinema releases with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “All We imagine as Light” by Payal Kapadia and “When Autumn Comes” by François Ozon.
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Grand Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival, All We imagine as Light takes us to Mumbai, a huge Indian megacity. The first part of the film is very realistic, we follow the tiring daily life of three women, who work in the same hospital. The oldest is a housekeeper, and the other two – nurses – share a modest apartment, in a budding friendship.
What defines them is paradoxical: they are those Indian women who, through work, achieve financial autonomy, but not yet true independence. The weight of the family, traditions, the caste system, constrains them. A forced marriage with a husband exiled in Germany, an impossible love story between the youngest Hindu and her Muslim boyfriend, an unjust expulsion, they endure and resist at the same time. With three formidable actresses and astonishing mastery, Payal Kapadia tells us about contemporary India.
And it is in the second part that the film takes off, when the three friends settle down at the seaside, between sweet sorority and quasi-fantastic scene, Payal Kapadia imagines a bright future, hence the title of the film , a future that passes through women.
Here is the Ozon 2024 vintage, since the director has now gotten into the habit of releasing one film per year. And a seasonal film what’s more, which takes place and is released in autumn, which sets its scene. Or a village in Burgundy, with beautiful forests around, where Michelle and Marie-Claude used to walk. Marie-Claude (whose son is in prison) is played by Josiane Balasko, and Michelle, the main character, is Hélène Vincent.
She is alone in her large and beautiful house, punctuated by domestic chores, and when her annoying daughter (Ludivine Sagnier) comes to have lunch with her son, she is intoxicated by a dish of mushrooms. She escapes, but cuts ties with Michelle, who ends up wondering if she didn’t do it on purpose.
Hélène Vincent is formidable, at 81 years old, in this moving and ambiguous role. And it is a very beautiful gift that this role offered to the actress by François Ozon, and that the person concerned places in a personal pantheon with the films Life is a long quiet river (unforgettable Marielle Le Quesnoy), but also I don’t kiss by André Téchiné, or A few hours of springby Stéphane Brizé.
When autumn comes is not revolutionary, and some plot twists are even a little crude, but the whole thing has this rather comforting je ne sais quoi.