Mère

Don't get fooled by the poster, this film is as much for a male audience than for a female one. According To Her is a sharply-written, touching and beautifully directed film. Estelle Artus weaves an atmosphere of apparent tranquility, of music and dinners with friends and casual conversations among French expatriates in New York (not a funny bunch!), but the surface is scratched by emotional outbursts, which cause the characters to discover their true natures. It is all done with hypnotic visual beauty and ends up being quite moving.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Unlike most of today's indies you won't have to digest a heavy one liner about the social struggles of this or that minority. It's hard to pin down According to Her, and that, from my point of view, is a quality. I would say that it's a study of the (female) human condition at the higher social and economic levels. A kind of upper-class neo-realism but surprisingly with moments of pure comedy (I laughed). This film has its weak points of course, but watching a feature that actually makes you think instead of imposing some agenda is rare enough today to deserve a review.

I saw this film in California when it was playing for its premiere at Cinequest and I was deeply moved by it. The decision to put at the center of a movie a woman who defines herself as a mother and nothing else is very provocative and timely. Veronica, the main character, is like the oak in the fable of the oak and the reed. With the opacity of someone who knows that she is in the right, if not by modern society's standards, then by her own, she doesn't bend under social pressure. She faces Adele, who is a French high-end executive with a brilliant career, a luxury loft, and a child at a distant boarding school. Adele is the tempest raging against Veronica's choice and shaking up everything and everybody in the fascinating airtight French expatriate milieu in which the film takes place. Avoiding the trap of a too frontal opposition, the narrative quickly enlists a third force: Amanda. Unlike Veronica and Adele, Amanda is neither strong nor talented, but she has a bewitching beauty and knows how to use it.

I found that the performances were fantastic across the board, with Irina Abraham as a no-nonsense mother loosing her balance under peer pressure and Pascal Yen- Pfister acting in a naturalistic style as the husband caught in the storm. A great work by the cast. The film is set in Tribeca and Noho and it does flirt with upper-class stereotypes, but in the nuanced writing and the work of the director, it goes far deeper and beautifully displays the toll taken on human lives when marriage and social assumptions clash. According to Her is a rare find, I recommend watching it.

I usually don't like indie movies, their cheap aspect turns me down. I watched According To Her at Brooklyn Film Festival mostly because I had two hours to kill before the film of a friend that was screening next. I thought I would stay 15 min, I watched till the very end and was near to cry twice. Maybe because my expectations were low, I was struck by the quality of this film. It does not look like most indies. It has its own quality in terms of colors and light and it's more the images than the narration that quietly but very powerfully brings you in. The views of New York are outstanding and unique. They made me re-think my city and I am a born New Yorker. In this age when every movie is all about the narrative and filmmakers call themselves 'story tellers', I found that According To Her is mastered at a much higher level. It's not about the story, and not about the acting (not always great even from the lead), it's about the film itself as a whole. The feel it leaves in you is strong and you keep feeling it (which is different than thinking about it) a long time after you watched it. This is when I decided to encourage the director (hence the review) because as a film-buff I know that such thing is rare enough.

As someone said in a previous comment there is a lot of humor so you are fairly entertained but at the same time the world depicted in this film is ice cold. It's a great contrast which I don't remember having seen in films in a while. One minute you laugh and the minute after you are tacking aback by the nastiness of the dialog and the sadness of the situation. Living with expatriates is no fun apparently. The end is very surprising and I keep thinking about it. Actors are good, specially the main actress and a male small second role whose name escapes me. I also loved the way New York is shown. It stays in your mind.