 |
| Dans la vie |
Philippe Faucon's new film is a wonderfully written and performed contemporary drama set in present-day France.
It relates not one but two stories of converging lives. Esther, a cantankerous elderly Jewish woman, appears destined to see out her years in a nursing home despite the efforts of her busy doctor son and an enviable home in the South of France. When Sélima, a young French-raised Arab woman, comes on board as her nurse-at-home, all appears saved, as the two form an unlikely friendship despite their considerable differences in age and background.
Life, however, doesn't go smoothly for Sélima. Mistreated while doing her other nursing rounds, and hounded at home by her family and her stricter hijab-wearing Muslim relatives, Sélima is eventually forced to enlist the help of her own mother, Halima, to help care for Esther, despite her mother's initial protestations.
First presented at the Toronto Film Festival only last month, this is a beautiful tale of inter-generation and religious differences, full of warmth of character and situation, that consistently confounds our expectations. Each of the three central women is a completely rounded character, full of inherited history, yet finally open to others despite the most profound differences.
