The Staple of News

The story: Suzanne (Sara Forestier) is a French working-class girl raised by a loving widowed father (François Damiens) along with her sister Maria (Adèle Haenel). A single mother at a very young age, she meets the wrong guy in town, a seductive petty criminal (Paul Hamy) she immediately falls for. She soon leaves her job to spend more time with her lover, starts to neglect her son... Suzanne's life is about to sink really hard.

The story behind the story: Suzanne is Katell Quillévéré's 2nd film after Love Like Poison (Un Poison violent) in 2010. Since then, she has directed an outstanding drama about heart transplant, Heal The Living (Réparer les vivants).

The pluses:

• A couple of great (and I mean really great) moments: when Suzanne's son calls her by her name rather than Mum (those who saw the film will understand what sequence I'm referring to), the way she hears of a bad news within her family...
• Solid acting from lead role Sara Forestier, and even better one from Adèle Haenel as Suzanne's faithful younger sister.

• Very original if not always compelling storytelling, letting the most spectacular events offscreen and showcasing more mundane but still very evocative moments of Suzanne's life.

The minuses:

• The downturn to the fragmented & elliptic storytelling I mentioned before: jumping from one vignette to another, I had the feeling of missing too much of the characters' lives & interactions to root for them as much as I should.

• While the film spans over 25 years or so, the depiction of the 80s or 90s is rather poor: the clothes, the cars, not to mention François Damiens' ludicrous fake hair when he's supposed to be young. This may sound like a detail, but I thought it undermines the veracity of it all.

• The story is rather interesting, but I'm still not really sure what point Katell Quillévéré wanted to make here (if there was ever a point to be made).

Verdict: Overall, I enjoyed watching this touching family saga, but I felt Katell Quillévéré's unquestionable talent may have been better served with a more focused story such as in Healing The Living.