France, 1998. Directed by Erick Zonca. Élodie Bouchez, Natacha Régnier, Grégoire Colin, Patrick Mercado, Jo Prestia.
An exceptional film which rightly picked up many nominations and awards for its two female leads and its director, including a shared Best Actress award for Élodie Bouchez and Natacha Régnier at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998. They play Isa and Marie, two young women who meet by chance and form a strong friendship – at first they are inseparable, with Isa moving into Marie’s borrowed apartment, but over the course of a couple of months their differences, particularly their fundamentally different philosophies of life and love, put a strain on their relationship. I’m aware that description doesn’t really do the film justice – there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s shot in a naturalistic style, which is simple but sweeps us into their world; we feel the intensity of their emotions. It’s refreshingly free of cliché and plot predictability, and its climax shockingly understated. A great piece of film-making.
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