Attachment **
de Carine Tardieu
French film, 1 h 45
By adapting Intimacy Alice Ferney, director Carine Tardieu (Young lovers) Attached to the beautiful character of Sandra and made it the center of her film to explore all of the links of other links than those who traditionally unite a family. Because her neighborhood neighbor, whom she knows no more than that, suddenly finds herself a widower with two young children, this fifty -something a bit revisible will be brought, in spite of herself, to share their intimacy and to experience feelings to which She did not necessarily expect.
It is that Sandra (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) is above all about her freedom. Libraire and feminist, she has a celibacy profession and has never considered having children. She lives surrounded by her books and tastes the calm of her solitude when Elliott (César Botti), 5 years old, arrives by chance in her life. With his naivety and childish franchise, he comes to shake up his beautiful certainties. The starting point could almost be that of a comedy with its somewhat caricatured archetypes, if the tragedy did not immediately burst into their lives. It is this dramatic bias that is the strength of the film, standing permanently at the edge of laughter and tears and taking directions thwarting the expectations each time.
A woman shaken in her certainties
We will not reveal anything that is not already revealed in the trailer if it is said that the neighbor of Sandra tells her an emergency son one morning, leaving for maternity to give birth to her second child and will not come back , victim of fairly rare complications. She then recovers the grieving widower, Alex (Pio Marmaï), and the infant, Lucille, whose animal instinct calls for the attention of upset adults. Faced with so much distress, this hitherto distant neighbor can only experience compassion. Especially since Elliott, faced with the absence of his mother, clings to this female figure which lives just on the other side of the landing.
This little boy then becomes the central axis around which the film is articulated. The doors open and close to the rhythm of the links that are recomposed between the characters. From then on, the film follows two narrative lines. On the one hand, Sandra who finds herself shaken in her convictions as a modern and independent woman by the attachment that she is gradually developing for each member of this family. But how far can the affection it has to these children and their father? What place can it occupy in this family in full recomposition? In this conflict with herself, always on the threshold of a love that she hesitates to give or to receive, separated from others by doors or windows symbols of this impossibility, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi works wonders. Abandoning the whimsical character to which she had accustomed us for a gravity while restraint, she has never been so overwhelming.
Actors to the employment
The other narrative line is that of Alex and his crossing of mourning enamelled with ups and downs, moments of doubts and false certainties. When he finally allows himself to continue living, he rushes in search of illusory happiness. There too, Pio Marmaï, at the counter-employment of his usual roles, respects the partition composed with meticulousness by Carine Tardieu who shows how much she is a good director of actors. Each role, from Vimala Pons, in love of substitution, to Raphaël Quenard, a little lost biological father of Elliott, via Catherine Mouchet and Marie-Christine Barrault, mothers with opposite registers, is finely composed and interpreted.
The director, who became a late mother by adoption, describes with great modesty and subtlety the way in which “attachment” is gradually built. A word that is both wonderful and indefinable, and even so much so evocative of the strength of a feeling that is not natural at the start. Rebecca Zlotowski already mentioned this subject in 2022 with The children of othersin which Virginie Efira tied a strong relationship with her companion’s little girl before being separated from it, for lack of a legitimate place with the child. Sandra must accept this attachment which arises in spite of itself.
(tagstotranslate) Monoparental family (cinema critic