Un poison violent

A young girl comes home from school to find her father has left.

Starring Clara Augarde, Lio and Michel Galabru

Written by Mariette Desert and Katell Quillevere

Directed by Katell Quillevere

I am really falling in love with these French subtitled films.

This is a coming of age tale. A battle between religion and lust. It's quirky, dark and funny in places. It starts off slow but slowly creeps in and captivates you. It is well acted and it's one of those movies that makes you think about life and all kinds of stuff. It's packed full of symbolism and meaning.

I love it!

10/10

At one level, this is a typical French coming-of-age film, with a religious theme and a small-town-in-the-country context.

However, there are also some nice quirks which a) set it apart from the norm and b) made me realise about half-way through that I'd seen it years ago without really knowing what I was watching but perhaps glad to find a French film among the dross on some hotel TV. The young Clara Augarde well handles the central role and its various emotional tones and there are also nice turns from the tortured priest and the lecherous grandfather.

Worth a look but don't expect tons of action.

As a cradle Catholic, I am familiar with the concept of Catholic guilt. We are taught in our youth of sin , especially of those of the flesh.

Anna is a teenage girl living in France who attends a boarding school but is on vacation living with her mother who has separated from her father. The husband's father is gravely ill and living with them.

Anna is preparing for her Confirmation amidst the turmoil of her family's squabbles. She is also involved with a local boy in her first teen romance.

Grandpa is a cranky and funny old man with an unusual request of Anna . I found it a particularly disturbing part of an otherwise touching drama.

It did bring back memories of my own Confirmation and I thought that the cast was excellent.

Teening can be tough. But most of the angst of adolescence is (for the rest of us, forever having to hear about it) a big yawn. What makes "Love Like Poison" (in French with English subtitles) worth watching? Brace yourself for stress (hers, not yours). It's all a bit too much (and too much all at once) for this fourteen year old girl: her parents are splitting up, her grandad is on his deathbed, her confirmation (Catholic) is looming, and then there's physical maturing at a gallop, an ambiguous relationship with her mother, an ambiguous relationship with the local priest, an ambiguous relationship with a local boy who seems to be even younger than she is. You name it, the agony is piled on. And yet the luminous personality of Anna (Clara Augarde) shines through. This isn't a splurge of self pity. We care about what's happening to her, because she's worth caring about.

Anna is intense. In past ages her vocation would have been obvious: she would become a nun. The "burden of spirituality" weighs upon her - she literally faints when it overwhelms. But who or what will win her soul? - God and the ache of her idealistic young spirit (she encounters an appealing "young church" and an unappealing "old church"); or will it be the sharp tingle of the body, symbolised by her sensual grandfather (who wants her to read an erotic poem at his funeral); or will it be the love she has for her agreeable but ineffectual father; or the love she has for her dominating mother (who is experiencing her own crisis of identity); or will it be possible for Anna to achieve a level of autonomy and win her own soul? From French cinema we expect tension, balance and clarity. The subtlety in "Love Like Poison" seems to demand that we watch it at least twice, in order to fit all the pieces together properly. But do the pieces fit? - that will depend on you.

In 'Love Like Poison', a schoolgirl returns home from boarding school, to face her depressed mother (who advises her, not to never doubt her beauty but rather, that when she doubts her beauty, never to tell a man!), her peripatetic father, a boy who fancies her, her ailing grandfather (who might do the same), and the local parish priest. It's not badly done, but there doesn't seem much point to the story: life (and death) happens, but nothing seems more dramatic or pointed than any particular sequence of real life where you can't quite get everything you want. The use of music in the soundtrack is also overdone, as it seems to be punching at a higher emotional weight than the underlying film. This is not a long film, but it feels more like opening scenes from a real story, over-extended, than a movie in itself.