Family fresco on a mother who came to France from Côte d’Ivoire, the second feature film of Léonor Serraille touches by his humanity and his exaltation of individual emancipation.
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We are notified in 2017 of the presence of Léonor Serraille in the corpus of French cinema. Training at the FEMIS. First feature film that immediately affects the bingo with a gold camera in Cannes, carried by a high-coated Laetitia Dosch performing a desocialized and transformative heroine (young woman). This is a cinema of social realism transcended by actual fever, inherited both by Cassavetes and Pialat, and which could recall, to choose from, Rosetta of the Dardenne brothers, L’Esquive (2003) by Abdellatif Kechiche, Louise Wimmer (2011) Cyril Mennegun, many others in truth. That some are bent on finding, in the wrong part of the qualifier, “French”. Never mind. Let us assume the label, as soon as it denotes intelligence, sensitivity, accuracy both of analysis and feelings. Especially since we leave with a little brother the treble of the individual slaughter for the more discreet charms of a chronic family fresco over the long term.
A little brother evokes the fate of a family from Côte d’Ivoire who settled in France in 1989, until today. A family fragment would be a fairer term. Rose, the mother, thirties. And his two children, Jean, the elder, and Ernest, the cadet. Two other brothers stayed in Africa. From the father, we no longer hear. It is, from the outset, to locate the dilemma of Rose, the mother, superbly interpreted by Annabelle Lengronne. Aspire to become an independent woman, socially, sentimentally and sexually, who firmly leads her destiny. And raise two children with very difficult social conditions with social conditions. It is on this tightness thread that Léonor Serraille advances the film, distills thirty years of a fierce and precarious life in a triptych of sobriety and exemplary finesse. Rose, Jean, Ernest, will name the paintings, focusing on the fate of each character.
Rose – Princess and maid – so beautiful, so unstable, so unhappy in love. And at the same time priestly in his vocation as a mother who sacrifices herself for the success of her children. Men parade: Jules Cesar, the choice of his community, going, coming, perorating, the proposal which seems to be imposed but that for this reason even she fled resolutely; A Tunisian worker met on the roofs of Paris, himself too precarious in France to ensure the stability of a love; A Frenchman finally, already in cleaning, and who will offer him the unacceptable fate of a vestal installed for him in Rouen, before tired of her.
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