Lena blazes into her family’s country home in a desperate fury, her two bewildered children in tow. Ostensibly, she and her chain-smoking pregnant sister and happy-go-lucky brother are seeing their parents off on a bus tour to Rome, but other agendas soon surface. Lena, having impulsively packed up and left her husband, is in the midst of a messy divorce, and her family’s desire for her to be happy results in a pileup of unsolicited advice, personal critiques and misguided attempts at social intervention. Not even the bucolic Breton countryside offers much comfort, serving up instead gothic folktales featuring a variety of dangerous women. French director Christophe Honoré wears the mantle of the New Wave lightly as he playfully unfolds his version of a woman on the edge, mixing dispassionate documentary-style observation with direct addresses to the camera and sudden leaps across time and place. In this world, the progression from quiet conversation to an exchange of blows seems both inexplicable and inevitable. A galaxy of supporting characters turn in stellar performances as they revolve around and react to Lena’s unpredictability. In a film that provides no easy resolutions, Chiara Mastroianni is riveting as the alternately brusque and vulnerable Lena, unwilling or unable to conform to others’ expectations and radiating panic in the face of vertiginous freedom as she confronts a life falling apart. —Monica Nolan, SFIFF


Written by Christophe Honoré, Geneviève Brisac. Photographed by Laurent Brunett. With Chiara Mastroianni, Marie-Christine Barrault, Jean-Marc Barr, Louis Garrel. (107 min, IFC Films).