Elle s'en va

Meandering but always on target account of Granny and one time Miss Brittany Catherine, exasperated by the problems of her small town life to the point of getting into the car and driving across France, only to get caught up in the dramas of her daughter, needing her to supervise the grandson who she has to shuffle to his already ticked off paternal grandfather - and we end up with yet another out of doors meal.

Though it avoids the touristy locations this one is a remarkable non judgmental cross section of 21st Century France, peopled by vivid characters just short of real. Deneuve continues to find vehicles which show off her stellar presence.

in a bitter manner. with an admirable script. story of a lady who desires to escape from her every day life. and the result. Catherine Deneuve does a fascinating role not only as remember of a long career but using new tools for create a character who has a profound force, convincing grace, delicate power.her great virtue - the links with the entire cast. and the fine exploration of each nuance. a film about family and choices. about happiness. and about fights. about beauty and honesty to yourself. nothing new. nothing complicated. only a beautiful film who propose few useful questions.and it is enough for discover the freshness of the new French cinema.

This is a movie in a long tradition of making movies for the only buyer: the government. So a 20-25 minute feature is blown up to 95 minutes to leave a boring taste of "has been". It's probably good enough for the die hard fans, but an avoidable waste of time for the others.

My score of 4 might be a bit high for this one, as there really wasn't a lot to love about this one. Catherine Deneuve's acting was nice....but apart from that I can't see much reason to see this film.

The film begins with Bettie (Deneuve) working hard in her restaurant as well as dealing with a mother she really doesn't like. When she goes for a short drive, however, she just keeps driving...abandoning her business without notifying anyone. Soon, however, her freedom is interrupted when Bettie's very angry daughter calls and demands that Bettie drop everything to pick up her grandson...a boy with whom she's had very little contact. The two then go on a roadtrip together and you are supposed to think they've bonded...but I just thought the kid was in insufferable brat.

The biggest problem about this film is that no one seems to like each other very much and the context for all this is missing...as if you've walked in a room with a family you don't know and you aren't introduced. And, to make it worse, you just find that you don't care about any of them. A misfire...with some decent acting.

Three of the four films made in the last 11 years by Emmanuelle Bercot have Catherine Deneuve as the star. Bercot is one of those film directors who, being also an actress, knows very well how to highlight the actors who play in her films. I think that they appreciate and enjoy the freedom of expression and the collaboration with a filmmaker who understands their experiences and feelings well. 'Elle s'en va', the first film that brought the two together in 2013 (the title in the English distribution is 'On My Way') is a good proof of the advantages of such collaborations. Catherine Deneuve creates one of her good and consistent roles, and for Bercot this is one of the most successful films of her entire career as a director.

The opening scenes describe one of the most catastrophic days in the life of Bettie, the main heroine of the film. She is in her 60s and lives a secluded life, running together with her mother a family restaurant that is in danger of bankruptcy. The most important memory of her life is participating in a Miss France beauty contest that had taken place some 40 years ago. The sweetheart of her youth is dead, so is the husband she may or may not have loved, and she is just now finding out that her lover has left her for a much younger woman. Nervous, she starts smoking again and gets into the car, driving where the roads take her. Her journey gets on a purpose when her daughter calls asking her to take her 11-year-old grandson to his other grandfather, whom she has never met. Traveling by car from one end of France to the other helps her get to know a world from which she had been cut off, her grandson and ultimately herself.

In 'Elle s'en va' we see two films. One of them is a 'road movie' set in 'Deep France' seen from the perspective of a woman who chose (or fate chose for her) to spend four decades in an isolated corner of the country. The other is a family drama spanning four generations. I really liked the 'road movie' part. Wanting to distance herself from the American or German models of the genre, Emmanuelle Bercot presents a diverse and positive human perspective and landscape. With one exception, Bettie meets good people, even if some are strange, people who jump in to help her rather than rob her, and at no point does she feel threatened as a single woman traveling alone. It is perhaps also a reflection of the other drama he is experiencing, the personal one. Viewers will never find out if her isolation was voluntary, if her relationships failed more because of her own fault or not. Some interesting themes are rather sketched out than developed, such as the repeated failure of women in every generation of the family to live independently, away from or without the men they loved. The scenes of the reunion after many decades of the participants in beauty contests of the last century would deserve a separate film. The ending is far too conventional to be believable. Catherine Deneuve is, of course, amazing. Not only does she seamlessly play the part of a woman ten years her junior, but she does so with sensitivity and depth, filling the screen with beauty and personality, just as she did 50 years before and will do 10 years from later. The role is written for her, the camera follows her from far and near, and the actress enters the role and imposes her persona and personality on her. Here, however, is the problem and perhaps the weakness of the film: Deneuve is so dominant that everything that happens around her character is overshadowed. It is as if we are in the central square of a city in the middle of which a superb statue or fountain absorbs the eyes of the visitors and does not allow them to see the beauty of the surrounding houses.