This film surprised me as I didn’t at first recognise the writer-director Hafsia Herzi who also plays the lead role in this her first fiction feature. The film played at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the ‘First Film’ prize. I watched it via My French Film Festival but it also appears to be available on various streamers and rental/DVD sites in the UK.
I realised quite quickly that I’d seen Ms Herzi in her first role as the young daughter of the lead character in Abdellatif Kechiche’s film Couscous (La graine et le mulet, France 2007). Since then she has built up a strong profile as an actor and now in her early thirties she has become a features director (she made a short film in 2014). Her film is quite difficult to categorise. It’s a film about emotional and sexual relationships in the 21st century. It’s not a romance, though it features several of the elements of a romance. Its ending is non-committal and that seems right. Herzi plays Lila, a Parisian woman whose relationship with Rémi (Jérémie Laheurte) has just ended, or at least has come to a point of separation. But when the film opens Lila is outside Rémi’s apartment block aiming to confront him for sleeping with another woman. Lila is finding it difficult to let go. A little later Rémi will announce that he is going on holiday in Bolivia for three weeks to ‘sort himself out’. Lila has friends who will support her and she is soon back in the swing of things, enjoying a number of one night stands, some of which are enjoyable, others not so much.
At one point Lila meets a younger man who wants to photograph her rather than make love to her and this appears to be a relationship she can really enjoy. But soon Rémi will be back from Bolivia. What will he do? Will Lila be completely over him? It doesn’t sound much of a narrative outline and I was quite surprised that I found the film easy to watch and I remained engaged throughout. I think there are several reasons why the film works. One is Hafsia Herzi herself as an actor and how she is presented on screen. The cinematographer Jérémie Attard is relatively inexperienced and this was his first feature. He has worked on a film for Abdellatif Kechiche and that shared experience with Hafsia Herzi seems to have influenced the overall approach to his handheld camerawork which features long shots and big close-ups of Lila. There are several sexual encounters but in most cases we see only the before and after. We do see quite a few meals which I like and it made me warm to Lila.
There are few references to Lila’s ethnicity but her decision to consult a ‘celebrity marabout‘ provides a surprising comic interlude. Lila’s friends are mostly other young women and Ali, a young gay man played by Djanis Bouzyani who provides the energy for several scenes. I’ve read some interesting commentaries on the film including one that suggests the film’s ‘naturalness’ is liberating and I certainly felt that I had been offered an entertaining glimpse into the world of 30 something young women in France. I’d go with the young Polish photographer Lila, he seems more grown up than most of the other guys.
The Case for Global Film 