Living in a small Parisian apartment, Sandra (Léa Seydoux) is barely able to support herself and her eight-year-old daughter Linn as a freelance translator. As her father Georg (Pascal Greggory) continues to lose his sight and memory from Benson’s syndrome, Sandra must navigate the labyrinthine system of national care homes, with all their financial burdens and logistical nightmares.
As her entire life begins to revolve around her banal obligations, Sandra has a chance encounter with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud), which blossoms into a passionate affair. After experiencing her daily life for so long as a series of duties and responsibilities towards others, Sandra attempts to reconcile her role as mother and caretaker to her nascent love affair with Clément, feeling almost guilty at the sudden, unexpected burst of love and happiness as her father’s condition worsens. In her intimate, thoughtful exploration through the fragile vagaries of love—romantic, filial, domestic—Mia Hansen-Løve (Things to Come, Bergman Island), delivers another poignant, personal film that resonates long after it ends.
Seydoux’s performance anchors the film, ultimately rendering it a love letter to the present, and to the ways heartbreak and hope intertwine.”—Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
Supported by
Mia Hansen-Løve
Léa Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia, Camille Leban Martins
France/Germany
2022
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.
Credits
Producer
David Thion, Philippe Martin
Screenwriter
Mia Hansen-Løve
Cinematography
Denis Lenoir
Editor
Marion Monnier
Production Design
Mila Preli
