Petite Solange

 

 

Writer/director Axelle Ropert

Director on the set with Jade Springer

PETITE SOLANGE               B                                                                                             France  (86 mi)  2021  d: Axelle Ropert

A heartbreaking tale of divorce, subjectively told from the point of view of a 13-year old daughter whose world is upended for reasons she cannot fathom, literally pulling the rug out from underneath her, leaving her emotionally devastated.  Most films about divorce are told from the adult point of view, like Ingmar Bergman’s epic Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) (2011), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku) (2016), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2017 Top Ten List #1 Happy Hour (Happî Awâ) (2015), or Noah Baumbach’s 2019 Top Ten List #3 Marriage Story, though a few notables accentuate how damaging this can be to children, like Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945), Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005), or Xavier Legrand’s 2017 Top Ten List #7 Custody (Jusqu'à la garde), which also starred Léa Drucker, yet the uncompromising attitude of the 13-year old protagonist is the female counterpart to Jean-Pierre Léaud in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), with the film similarly ending on a final freeze frame.  Starting out writing film criticism for the short-lived La Lettre du cinéma magazine, where she was editor-in-chief, an approach that is common for male directors, but very uncommon for female directors, Ropert has crafted a small, intimate, and delicate film with a cathartic power, a French family drama elevated by the performance of young star Jade Springer in her first feature, playing teen schoolgirl Solange, who is intelligent and acutely sensitive, yet also introverted, living with her moody older brother Romain (Grégoire Montana-Haroche), her artistically inclined mother Aurélia (Léa Drucker), who is a successful actress,, and her father Antoine (Philippe Katerine) who runs a music store.  Drawing on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s emotionally scarred performance in Claude Miller’s AN IMPUDENT GIRL (1985), yet also Natalie Wood in Elia Kazan’s SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961), both of which accentuate the exposure of human frailties, everything seems to be going well at the outset, as Solange’s parents are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, and while there are occasional awkward moments, there is no sign of any particular problem, but soon there are cracks in the façade of happiness, with the husband sleeping on the couch, and arguments extending long into the night, as this carefully calibrated film follows a young girl experiencing the pain of having to accept her parents as people with faults.  Exuding a naturalness in her performance through an economy of means, as if gleaned from the films of Éric Rohmer, there are no heightened, melodramatic moments, nothing that feels pretentious, instead this is filled with a quietly astute observational eye, where ordinary moments comprise most of what we see.

Set in Nantes, a city associated with Jacques Demy, opening to the dramatic music of Benjamin Esdraffo, his third collaboration with this director, the film is shot on 16mm by Sébastien Buchmann, who assisted Éric Gautier on Léos Carax’s POLA X (1999), much of it handheld, made to resemble the verité stylishness of 1970’s films, featuring bright pastel colors that eventually fade in the latter stages of the film, bathing the film with familial warmth, as this appears to be a close-knit family, where the mother loves to bring her children to her live performances, like part of an extended family.  Generated by what the director describes as the “simplicity principle,” the film uses an interesting device, showing Solange being asked to read a Paul Verlaine poem in front of the class, yet she quickly hesitates and sits down, unable to continue, offering no apparent explanation, with the film backtracking in time through flashbacks, only to return to that same moment later in the film, this time getting deeper into the dramatic ramifications, as she’s overwhelmed by the emotional fallout from her family troubles, causing her an extreme degree of mental stress.  Parents never want to cause their children pain, but divorce is a tricky subject, often hidden from the rest of the world, where there are little daily explosions that everyone has to navigate, and there are no real guidelines of how to get through it.  Solange is a seemingly happy kid, developing an interest in a slightly older piano-playing classmate (Léo Ferreira), but he doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in her.  She is best friends with a tomboyish classmate Lili (Marthe Léon), with both doing a class presentation together on Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is an inspiration to her generation for standing up for what she believes, a teenager challenging world leaders, failing to comprehend why so little is being done to reduce carbon emissions, credited for raising public awareness, especially among young people, becoming the youngest-ever Time magazine person of the year in 2019 at the age of 16, where they clearly share the same concerns for saving the planet, showing a wild enthusiasm for her principled advocacy.  Horrified that her parents appear to be drifting apart, as there appears to be no reconciliation for their problems, things really spiral out of control when she visits Gina (Chloé Astor), her father’s younger assistant at the music store, who is inexplicably wearing her father’s sweater, causing an outraged Solange to run out of the store in anger, shocked at what she sees. 

The knock on the film is that it grows very fragmented towards the end, not really following any recognizable timeline, where storywise it may not make sense, feeling more like a freefall of disturbing events.  The film’s greatest strength, on the other hand, is its probing tenderness and sensitivity in the inquisitive character of Solange, who is largely alone, separated from the other members of her family, as her brother runs off to Spain to study abroad, missing him terribly, while both parents are otherwise preoccupied, leaving her without the support of the adults around her.  In what is essentially a coming-of-age story, our expectations are tempered by the illusions of youth, who envision a better and more hopeful world, yet reality comes crashing in where you least expect it, as the most devastating moments in Solange’s life remain offscreen, forced to navigate her way through an unchartered wilderness.  A glaring hint lies in a movie poster on the wall of her school classroom, Luigi Comencini’s MISUNDERSTOOD (1966), a tale of childhood innocence suddenly having to come to terms with a death in the family.  Divorce is a comparable feeling, as you lose something in each parent, a loving trust that is no longer there, uprooted from that safety net, where there’s no more normal everyday life, suddenly forced to contend on your own, realizing something her father describes as “children and adults live in different worlds.”  The pain and helplessness she feels is written all over her face, where words can’t really express it, yet it’s communicated with poetic delicacy and cinematic modesty, with an undertone of operatic refrains from Italian singers.  Taking refuge from her parent’s incessant arguing, Solange spends a long time sitting alone in a café, because she simply doesn’t know where else to go, eyed suspiciously by the server, yet she’s stuck in a no man’s land without a clue what happens next.  Lost in despair, she begins wandering the streets alone, deluged by an absence of love, overwhelmed by a profound sadness, falling into the river one night under suspicious circumstances, where all we see is her blue scarf floating on the surface of the water, fleeting details that describe the enormity of her world falling apart, veering into unchartered territory.  After months in therapy for depression, she emerges with a new understanding, forced to contend with a new reality, but it doesn’t hide the profound melancholy and darker implications she feels when her parents decide to divorce and sell the house where she grew up, without anyone having told her, where the last family meal celebrating her 14th birthday takes place in the back garden of the house, a place she can no longer call her own, finding herself adrift on the winds of change, where the brutal loss of innocence becomes a harsh reality that fervently pierces the heart. 

Last Summer (L'été Dernier)

 

Director Catherine Breillat

LAST SUMMER (L'été Dernier)       B-                                                                                 France  Norway  (104 mi)  2023  d: Catherine Breillat

Since I’m an artist, I don’t have to be politically correct.                                                                —Catherine Breillat, Catherine Breillat: Asia Argento Is a Traitor and I don't ... 

The kind of film you’ll see made only in France, which has a tradition of summer movies that spin out of control in dizzying fashion, as it fits their sensibility of lurid provocation causing considerable outrage.  There’s a contentious aspect to all the films of this director, where fantasy always plays a large role, typically female fantasies in the context of a patriarchal society, and this is no different, as she enjoys exploring the edge of moral turpitude, literally normalizing taboo subjects, feeling very comfortable with the uncomfortable.  Described by Beatrice Loyaza in her Film Comment interview (Interview: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer) in the fall of 2023 as “the high priestess of errant female sexuality.  Throughout her career, she has continued to ruffle feathers, be it with her austere visions of (unsimulated) sex (Romance, 1999) or with her unflinchingly violent portrayals of sexual initiation (Fat Girl, 2001),” while actress Asia Argento, who worked with her on THE LAST MISTRESS (2007), fed up with her aversion to the #MeToo movement while publicly defending serial rapist Harvey Weinstein after more than 80 women made allegations of sexual harassment or rape against him, described Breillat as “the most sadistic and downright evil director I’ve ever worked with (French Filmmaker Catherine Breillat Calls Actress Asia ...).”  Coming after a period of not making any films in a decade, the 76-year old director, novelist, and European Graduate School film professor chose to do a literal French remake of May el-Toukhy’s edgy Danish film QUEEN OF HEARTS (2019), working for the first time with cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie, who began her career shooting André Téchiné's remarkable Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), with a screenplay written by Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer, which premiered at Cannes in 2023.  The scandalous story recalls the moral transgressions of Woody Allen’s infamous love affair with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former partner Mia Farrow, who discovered nude photographs of Previn in Allen’s home, yet they ended up in a marriage that still stands the test of time, despite a more than thirty year age difference between them, while also recalling the tabloid sensation of Todd Haynes’ 2023 Top Ten List #9 May December, which subverts the typical male predator role into a female.  Women and female desire have been a consistent element of Breillat's work, where part of equality of the sexes is an understanding that they’re both equally capable of carrying out the same kind of crimes, including crimes of passion, where certainly one of the goals of this film is to reverse gender norms.  In this regard, Breillat distinguishes herself, as she refuses to render judgment on either party, but instead presents a quasi-realist take on a particularly dark subject matter, as a torrid sexual relationship develops between a fifty-year old woman Anne (Léa Drucker, from Xavier Legrand’s 2017 Top Ten List #7 Custody (Jusqu'à la garde) and Lukas Dhont’s Close in 2022), and her self-absorbed, emotionally remote 17-year old stepson Théo (Samuel Kirchner, the son of actress Irène Jacob and younger brother of Paul Kirchner from Christophe Honoré’s 2023 Top Ten List #6 Winter Boy (Le Lycéen), who was originally cast in the role), bearing some physical resemblance to Björn Andrésen, the beautiful boy portrayed in Luchino Visconti’s DEATH IN VENICE (1971).  The French have a term for it, amour fou, an uncontrollable or obsessive passion, succumbing to the power of the flesh over reason, often with an accompanying sense of doom.  With no real audience connection to any of the characters, and her usual lack of subtlety or grace, not really her strong suit, Breillat turns the screws in making this as disturbing and as uncomfortable as possible, yet still quintessentially French, turning this into a bonafide horror movie, with a lie at the heart of the picture, intentionally left ambiguous, without a trace of melodrama, though it can feel contrived and over-the-top, bordering on bombastic, where Breillat’s characters have a history of making bad decisions and constantly lying to themselves, while the unsettling nature of the fallout can leave viewers with a sinking feeling.

Listed at #9 on Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2023, and #5 by John Waters, this is an elevated family drama with a pernicious undercurrent of forbidden love, where it brings to mind Bernardo Bertolucci’s LUNA (1979), an incestuous love story between an opera singer (Jill Clayburgh) and her drug-addicted 15-year-old son, something Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky described as “monstrous, cheap, vulgar rubbish."  What makes this so abhorrent is Anne’s profession, as she’s a French juvenile rights attorney for sexually abused minors, so she’s used to seeing the traumatic harm inflicted by adults onto children, where the profound impact is not just heartbreaking, but emotionally devastating.  So she’s a gatekeeper for damaged youth, a protector from salacious and injurious acts, where the psychological damage is long-lasting and incomprehensibly toxic.  With that introductory backdrop, what follows is a cautionary tale that takes us down a rabbit hole of aberrant behavior.  Théo has been living with his mother in Geneva, but after getting kicked out of school for assaulting a teacher, this problem child comes to live with Anne and her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), along with their two young adopted Asian daughters Angela (Angela Chen) and Serena (Serena Hu), in an immense home on the heavily forested outskirts of Paris.  Pierre has business connections that require extensive travel, harboring a guilty conscience about not being there during Théo’s childhood, still having a distant relationship, with a brooding Théo remaining socially aloof, continually glued to his phone, seen moping in his room, and not really interacting with anyone.  His emotional volatility creates a negative impression, regarded as an irritant, where he just doesn’t give a damn about anyone else.  When Anne discovers he’s the likely culprit in a break-in, his self-centered attitude doesn’t sit well with her, so she attempts to set him straight, but in doing so opens herself up, spending time together during one of her husband’s prolonged absences, even allowing him to give her a small, homemade tattoo on her forearm, a completely unlikely scenario that leads to kisses and a passionate embrace, where it’s clear she has crossed the line of acceptable behavior.  As improbable as it sounds, she allows herself to get caught up in forbidden desires, suddenly reliving her lost youth in the pastoral bliss of summer, echoing Agnės Varda’s KUNG-FU MASTER! (1988), perhaps best expressed in a vintage Mercedes convertible drive out in the countryside set to the music of Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth - Dirty Boots (Revised Audio) YouTube (5:06), which is like an engine gearing up for a heightened impact.  This rebellious spirit emboldens them both, suddenly free to defy the odds and ignore all the warning signs, breaking down all moral boundaries, simply plunging into the forbidden zone, Here is an exclusive clip from French provocateur Catherine ... YouTube (2:20).  On the other hand, Anne is rarely seen without a glass of wine in her hand, potentially clouding her judgment, yet if audiences know anything about her it is that she of all people should know better, something we are constantly reminded of throughout the film.  Based on this knowledge, it’s hard to view her as a sexual predator, and she has multiple opportunities to break it off, but succumbs instead to her lustful instincts at the expense of everything else, all happening right under the nose of her husband, where this is a film that prioritizes the carnal part of the relationship rather than the havoc it could wreak, but the sex scenes play out almost entirely as close-ups on faces rather than naked bodies.  The moral hypocrisy is hard to miss, especially having seen the emotional fragility of the young girls Anne represents, yet she continually places herself in the most compromising positions, falling into an ethical free fall where rules are simply thrown out the window.  It’s hard to view this as anything other than arrogance and self-righteousness, as if this is her God-given right.      

The film is told almost completely through Anne’s perspective, allowing viewers to actually get inside her head, which adds a subversive layer to the experience.  And while this illicit couple sneak around behind the backs of adults, they are discovered by her sister Mina (Clotilde Courau), who has had her own difficult struggles in life and is truly disgusted by what she sees, as her sister is someone Mina could lean on for advice and support.  Théo doesn’t care if they get discovered, as he’s not connected to anyone or anything, but Anne has her family and career to think about, where she is jeopardizing both.  In a beautiful outdoor setting for lunch, the unsuspecting Pierre discusses taking his son for a little one-on-one time together, thinking it’s exactly what he needs, as we see Théo’s shirtless frame hovering in the background, like you see in the horror films, Last Summer (L'Été Dernier) new clip official from Cannes ... YouTube (1:31), suggesting Anne is in deeper trouble than she thinks, where the amped up tension is thick, knowing how this could open Pandora’s Box.  Upon his return, Pierre reveals his son’s startling allegations, but rather than confront the reality of her own behavior, Anne instead pretends nothing happened and doubles down on the cover up, coldly pretending it’s all a vile lie espoused by a mixed-up kid who’s trying to get back at his father for not being there for him.  The further down the road we go, the uglier and more loathsome it feels, revealing an unseemly side of the power dynamics of middle class entitlement, with Anne banking on her contention that no one will believe a troubled kid over a seasoned adult professional, where the irony is not lost on us, coming from a woman who advocates for minors, “Nobody will believe you.  You’re not credible.”  While that may be her viewpoint, it is certainly not that of the viewing audience, who are appalled at what we see, as she has betrayed not only her marriage and parental responsibilities, but also everything that her profession stands for.  Thoroughly capable of committing the same crimes as men, Anne privileges female pleasure in a way that is not only problematic, but treads rather murkily into rape territory, if not legally then certainly metaphorically.  In France, the legal age of consent is fifteen-years old, so the real taboo is incest, which applies to sexual relationships between children under 18 and their stepparents. Breillat portrays the situation with little to no judgment, even when things fall apart under the stress of outside scrutiny, but for viewers this becomes fertile grounds for horror, filled with self-deceptions, accentuated by Anne’s defiant lies and her insistent denial of any and all responsibility, essentially subverting the truth, completely blind to the ramifications, where in the end there is a general acceptance of the unacceptable.  That may be the real horror.  Who knew she would become the wicked stepmother, often seen in a devious light in fairy tales (The myth of the evil stepmother - BBC).  It shows that people of a privileged social class will resort to anything, lies, hypocrisy, or even smear tactics to defend their bourgeois lifestyles.  As a point of contention, Breillat’s own attitude towards this film bears some scrutiny, describing at a Cannes press conference that what transpires is “pure love” (Catherine Breillat Talks Taboo-Breaking Cannes film Last ...), as there is a certain romanticization in the relationship of Anne and Théo, though it couldn’t be less about “love,” as it’s so self-centered and destructive, exuding no faith in each other, or any existing humanity, with Breillat also suggesting there is no abuse, that “All of my characters are innocent” (State of Grace: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer), describing those who negatively pass moral judgment on their affair as “the ayatollahs.”  Similarly, she has spoken out against intimacy coordinators, describing them as “stupid” while also comparing them to the Taliban (Awful #metoo extremism is worse than McCarthyism).  In this instance, the director may be her own worst enemy, as her instincts for lacking any moral compass are a dangerous position for any artist, actually recalling the reaction of the Julianne Moore character in MAY DECEMBER, where a 34-year old teacher pleaded guilty to having sex with a 12-year old 6th grade student, yet in her mind she viewed statutory rape as a Shakespearean romance of star-crossed lovers, veering into a delusional psychopathic understanding, with French novelist Christine Angot similarly denouncing Breillat’s film as “an aestheticization of incest.”  As the Rohmeresque title indicates, this is one of Breillat’s lightest films, only showing what she wants us to see, yet by the end, the heavy storm clouds are lurking on the distant horizon.