As an American who loves French film, I had not known actress/writer/director Axelle Ropert until The Criterion Channel posted several of her films for screening, including her directorial debut, The Family Wolberg. Like her later films, this lovely, delicate, incredibly moving film is full of the complexities of relationships, especially family relationships, and the difficult bonds between parents and children. As with all her following films (that I've been able to see, which is about 5), her characters are beautifully drawn by Ropert the writer and Ropert the director, in collaboration with powerful actors who, to a one, embody the internal lives of the characters, and somehow manage to communicate them to the audience, often while hiding them from the other characters in the films. Rather than review the plot, I absolutely have to call out the women: most especially the incredibly moving performances by Valérie Benguigui, who plays the infinitely sad Marianne, and by the 20-year old Léopoldine Serre, who glows with such an intensity that I can't believe this already-quite-experienced young woman won't be a major French star on the level of someone like Juliet Binoche.
That said, François Damiens as Simon is capable of describing cruelty one moment, and inchoate love the next. Serge Bozon (longtime writing partner to Ropert and husband of cinematographer Céline Bozon (the film is gorgeous, set in winter and shot in lush widescreen) is terrific as Simon's brother-in-law Alexandre, and everyone else is terrific as well.
Ropert's films remind me (in a sort of perverse way, since they have so little in common) of the films of Mike Leigh, mainly in that it feels as if (and I don't know if this is true) the actors had plenty of time to rehearse, theater-like, until their characters' blood runs through their veins and stamps itself into their DNA.
I'm going to research some interviews with Ropert because, along with Celine Sciamma, she is rapidly becoming a touchstone for me, for what is so special about French cinema. I grew up loving the likes of Renoir and Carné, Truffaut and Malle, and I love that, through the decades, there has never been a lull in the extraordinary quality of French cinema. Ropert's films are sadly not really available in America (with the exception of the Criterion Channel) but I'll seek them out wherever I can find them.
