|
Love Like Poison
| Released |
13 May 2011 |
| Director |
Katell Quillévéré |
Starring
|
Clara Augarde, Lio, Michel Galabru, Stefano Cassetti, Thierry Neuvic, Francois Bernard |
Writer(s)
|
Katell Quillévéré,
Mariette Désert |
| Producer(s) |
Justin Taurand |
| Origin |
France |
| Running Time |
85 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Rating |
16 |
|
|
Bittersweet beauty.
Writer-director Katell Quillévéré's debut feature, Un Poison Violent (loosely translated as Love Like Poison), is a much lauded coming-of-age film which follows the life of a young teenage girl as she struggles with the competing demands of faith and the flesh. Taking its title from a Serge Gainsbourg song, the French film won critical acclaim at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, taking home the Best Screenplay prize, while Quillevere also took home the prestigious Jean Vigo Award which honours independence of spirit and an originality in style.
Anna (Clara Augarde), a blossoming fourteen year-old returns home from boarding school to find that her once-happy parents are now embroiled in a bitter separation. Her beloved father Paul (Thierry Neuvic) has left the family home to live with another woman while Anna's bitter and depressed mother Jeanne (Lio) is left to seethe and fret over the thought of an impending divorce. Her twinkly-eyed grandfather Jean (Michel Galabru) is Anna's only real friend yet his bawdy humour and unrepentant sensuality shocks her and she is left confused when her own first stirrings of lust for a local village boy fail to complement her ingrained sense of spirituality.
What could have been a trite and unoriginal take on a classic loss of innocence tale has morphed into something both sacred and beautiful in Quillévéré's Love Like Poison. Well developed characters and a suitably art-house ambiance allow the film to unfurl at its own pace while the sensitivity with which the subject matter is deftly handled allows the audience to ponder the more thought provoking issues that are at the very heart of religion, spirituality and sexuality. While the ensemble cast are all excellent, it is Galabru as the irascible aged lothario and Augarde herself as the beguiling Anna that steal the show. Augarde, in her richly sympathetic portrayal of the oftentimes controversial and intimate actions of Anna onscreen, shows an acting maturity well beyond her tender years. Similarly the awkward and exploratory relationship between Anna and the free-spirited Pierre (Youen Leboulanger-Gourvil) has all the charming naiveté of the young untethered teenage tryst. While personally I could have done without the mildly distracting English folk music which permeated much of the film, this is on the whole a very minor negative in what is a wholly consummate French gem.
- Louisa McElwee |
