Alice and Martin = Alice et Martin

After his father’s death, twenty year old Martin (Alexis Loret) goes missing. He eventually reappears at his brother’s Paris apartment and moves in with him and his housemate Alice (Juliette Binoche). Martin finds success as a fashion model and begins a tentative sexual relationship with the shy Alice. But when Martin hears that she has fallen pregnant this results in a breakdown where the shattering truth of what occurred during his disappearance threatens to destroy him and his relationship. As Techine showed in his earlier work, “Wild Reeds”, he is a master of acute observations of human need and desire. The fractured individuals at the heart of “Alice and Martin” are all seeking solace and safety. Neither detachedly bleak nor fashionably cynical, Techine’s work recalls the strong humanist tradition in French cinema: he is certainly Jean Renoir’s heir. But this is no revisionist or conservative cinema. Techine’s fine intimate portraits are alive to both the possibilities of cinema and the complex sexual and gender relationships at the core of modern life. With Carmen Maura. In French with English subtitles.