One of the strengths of the French film industry is that it produces films that would never be produced in Hollywood- films that pass little judgement on the choices of it’s characters, even when we receive an intimate glance into their motivations.

“Going Away” is no different. From veteran actress Nicole Garcia, now in the position of writer/director, this film is a patient, smooth and delicately wrought combination of family tension and personal development.

Baptiste (Pierre Rochefort) is a primary school substitute teacher, one who despite clearly loving his job, and being offered permanent positions, prefers to keep his attachments and relationships short term. Despite this, when his student Mathias (Mathias Brezot), is left stranded for the long weekend when his separated parents fail to make plans for him, Baptiste takes him in.

The next day, Mathias insists that they travel to visit his mother- surprising her at the beachfront restaurant where she works. Delighted to see him, Sandra (Louise Bourgoin) makes time in her hectic work schedule to spend time with her son, and with Baptiste. When the two quickly form a connection, Sandra and Baptiste head out. The latter drinks alcohol at Sandra’s insistence, quickly developing quickly into a rage, engaging in a brawl that hints as to the reasons behind his unwillingness to establish more permanent roots.

It transpires that Sandra is no stranger to violence either- in efforts to provide for Mathias’, her poor instincts with money and several bad business ventures have left her heavily in debt and at the mercy of those sent to collect her due. Baptiste, observing Sandra with Mathias and already forming an attachment to the pair, quickly takes responsibility for the debt. It emerges that Baptiste has been long estranged from his extremely wealthy family, and their interactions over the course of the movie reveal more about why his coloured affects him so much in his present life.

Under Garcia’s excellent direction, and clear understanding of how a film should intrigue it’s audience, “Going Away” entrances softly, without fanfare or dramatic devices. The characterization of Baptiste’s extended family and brilliant casting develops a rich shared history for the figures in the film, providing a depth of knowledge not ordinarily produced in such a short amount of time. Garcia and co-scenarist Jacques Fieschi manage to create a sense of intimacy without explicit detail, using the interactions (even brief one) between the families in this film to form a larger understanding of their relationships.

The loose narrative is one of the few detriments of this film, whose resolution was unnecessarily ambiguous. Despite it’s impressionistic style, the final scenes were unfulfilling in many ways, underwhelming the building romance of Sandra and Baptiste, and failing to draw on the deep undercurrents of tension between Baptiste and his family.

Despite these few small shortcomings, the majority of the film is wonderfully crafted, and drenched with languid shots of beaches and an expansive countryside. The naturalistic light matches the seemingly ordinary story of family, old ties and new love with a unique take on the consequences of running from the past.

The unhurried and sensitive narrative will perfectly suit art-house audiences- reservedly romantic and quietly patient, with enough allure and intelligence to win over the soft heart in anyone.

“Under the Rainbow” opens with a dream sequence that sets the stage for Agnes Jaoui’s new comedy-drama, perfectly encapsulating this kitsch, colourful and unexpectedly existential French film.

A modern-day fairytale which hints, borrows from and outright bastardizes almost every children’s story and cultural myth imaginable, “Under the Rainbow” is a collected tale. Revolving around the innocent Laura (Agathe Bonitzer) falling in love with both shy but determined aspiring composer Sandro (Arthur Dupont) and his semi-mentor, the darkly selfish but enigmatic Maxime (Benjamin Biolay), the film contains everything one could dream up for such an undertaking.

Director Jaoui and screenwriting partner Jean-Pierre Bacri have collaborated previously, establishing themselves as masters of the slightly offbeat romantic comedy. As actors in their own films, the two veterans of the French film industry pair together seamlessly, creating a warm and witty approach to some of the deeper anxieties about humanity.

The intricate tangle of stories contains every literary reference imaginable, from Prince Charming, to Red Riding Hood, to the evil stepmother, the fairy godmother, and the big bad wolf. Underneath these is the true gold of the movie, the idea that fairytale lives are often unattainable, and that the subtle nuances of human nature often get in the way of true love, dreams and familial relationships.

The dialogue is offset with sly one-liners and anxieties about death which provide much needed light and shade to what could have been a pastiche of nonsensical myth narratives. Sandro’s father Pierre (Bacri) and Laura’s aunt Marianne (Jaoui) form a bizarre and touching relationship as Marianne learns to drive under Pierre’s tutelage. Their offbeat and honest conversations, largely conducted whilst in the car, are refreshingly real and offer an existential counterpart to the fantastical developments of their younger relatives relationship.

Laura and Sandro’s romance begins to derail, thwarted by the older Maxime, and somewhat generically resolves itself with a typically French statement of “They lived happily ever after…and strayed often”. Cutting between the two narratives of the middle-aged and the youthful, the film does a good job of balancing the expectations of life with its reality, and contrasts dark humour and sardonic anxieties with the essentially juvenile foibles of the younger characters.

The constant and heavy-handed allusions to various fairytales seemed unnecessary, and somewhat jarring in a narrative that could have operated much more cleanly without the constraints of such intertextuality. Whilst the film is perhaps too convoluted, it’s self-consciousness does create a depth of history and meaning that can only come from the weight of so many mythic references. “Under the Rainbow” is free from didacticism, and without a moral centre, develops into a whimsical exploration of the wishes and desires that we hold dear to our hearts.

From the very first moments of director Martin Provost’s new film, the eponymous Violette is a figure at once both tragic and compelling. Violette is as honest as it is visually stunning, sharp with intimate moments and dreamy artistry that form an unusual but apt portrayal the life of this groundbreaking feminist.

Whilst many biopics can be removed affairs, strained with dual pressures of capturing an extraordinary life without passing judgement, Provost’s portrayal of Leduc, the critically-acclaimed post-war French author is enthralling, rich with detail and emotion. The portrayal of Violette is as complex and sharp as the feminist writer herself, delving into her life in all its bizarre and tragic circumstances over the span of the 20 years from the end of World War Two to the publication of her first bestseller in 1964.

Emanuelle Davos is striking as the gifted but troubled Violette, tormented by her constant need for affirmation and her inability to allow those she loves to exist separately from her. Provost, whose 2008 film “Seraphine” mirrors many of the issues raised in “Violette”, stretches Leduc’s life out in a series of six chapters, each one dealing with a new relational obsession in her life, weaving the subtle threads of her destructive desire for love.

The film opens in the days preceeding the end of WWII, where Leduc survives as a black-market dealer, posing as the wife of gay writer Maurice Sachs. Amongst the terror of surviving in famine-riddled Paris, Leduc experiments with writing, but it is after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s “She Came to Stay” that Violette is compelled to compose her own exposition. “L’Asphyxie” (“In the Prison of Her Skin”) is based on her relationship with her emotionally withdrawn and controlling mother, her memories of childhood and her experience of sexual abuse.

Violette seeks out Beauvoir as a mentor, and in doing so, forms one of the most significant relationships of her life, one around which the film derives momentum. The contrast of the restrained and thoughtful Beauvoir (played by Sandrine Kiberlain) and the undisciplined Violette, a woman afire with desperation, is wonderfully telling and altogether bleak. Beauvoir introduces Violette to her circle of friends, many of whom are progressive writers and philosophers, including Albert Camus, Jean Genet and Jacque Guerin.

Whilst the film emphasizes Leduc’s triumph as a female writer, one of the first women in literature to portray honestly and openly a women’s experience of abortion (as well as divorce, same-sex affairs and her sexual awakening), the narrative resonates more hauntingly as a tightly wrought exploration of her obsessive need to be recognized, to be appreciated, to be comforted. Violette’s almost-mantra of “alone again, always alone” is the consistent thread upon which the film is strung, and casts light on her relationships with men, women, her mother, her readers, her publisher, her friends. She is consumed by this need, one which both motivates her craft as a writer and destroys her sense of self and the few healthy relationships she has.

Provost does not deny the creation process of a writer, creating languid and sensual shots in which we consume the act of writing. Leduc’s struggle to find her voice as a writer is intricately linked with her relational developments, as these feed back into her work, for ill or for good.

In the moments when Violette is at her most volatile and dramatic, the film never stoops to theatricality. Whilst she wails at de Beauvoir, hits her mother, and abuses strangers for arbitrarily appreciating her, Provost creates the sense that we are also seeing her at her most private. Every moment of pain is laid bare, and the film is all the richer for it.

The blend of Violette’s deep sense of entrapment with her desperate outbursts form a wonderfully varied and nuanced portrait of this groundbreaking female writer.