Year:  2022

Director:  Céline Devaux

Rated:  M

Release:  September 7, 2023

Distributor: Vendetta

Running time: 97 minutes

Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

Cast:
Blanche Gardin, Laurent Lafitte, Marthe Keller, Nuno Lopes

Intro:
A nice divertissement ...

Being optimistic and likable is not the same as being loved. And everyone secretly wants to be loved, right? This is the age-old dilemma that director Céline Devaux’s comedy-romance tackles.

Jeanne (Blanche Gardin) is a young middle-aged woman living in France. Her mother has recently passed, and has left behind a flat that she owned in Lisbon. Jeanne talks to her very supportive brother Simon, and they decide that she should head over to Portugal to sort out the flat with a view to selling it. Given that Jeanne doesn’t have much money and is in a slightly unsettled place, this seems like it could be a life-refreshing project.

At the airport, Jeanne bumps into cocky and handsome Jean (veteran comedic actor Laurent Lafitte). From the get-go, Jean is super confident in a way which unnerves Jeanne as much as it intrigues her. Jean claims to know her from the distant past and he leverages this to pop up every now and then in a way that seems almost intrusive. He doesn’t make a romantic move though, and Jeanne is not even sure she wants him to. She is also plagued by visions of her dead mother and thinks that she is going mad.

Devaux directs all this with a light touch and there are moments of charm. She includes the device of letting us in on Jeanne’s subconscious thoughts illustrated in quirky animations. The director not only wrote this, but she also did the drawings. One wonders how much of this is based on her real life experience. One suspects also that, familiar though it is, it will speak to the experience of many women of the character’s age and stage of life.

Gardin has a gamine charm (incidentally she looks a little like another French actress Laure Calamy, who plays in similar films). The support cast are all solid and the film is short and never outstays its welcome. That said, it is quite slight when all said and done. A nice divertissement then.

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