Emporte-moi

Caught between childhood and the adult world, in a time similarly challenged by change, Karine Vanasse is enchanting as a girl coming of age in 1960s Quebec. Parents, teachers, sex, philosophy, obsession with a film character, running away -- we've seen it all before, but this is a loving remembrance, shot in warm colours, with a thoughtful script and excellent performances, richly evoking the emotion, confusion and excitement of adolescence.

Excellent coming-of-age story. It feels really lived in. I'm not sure if it's autobiographical, but it sure feels like it. Karine Vanasse plays 13 year-old Hanna, a girl from Montreal with kind of a rough family life. Her parents are unmarried and poor, and along with her older brother they all live in a cramped apartment. Hanna falls in love with Godard's Vivre sa vie, and inspired by it, she is led down a dangerous path. As you might expect with the genre, there are moments of joy along with the pain. Novelist Nancy Huston plays Hanna's teacher, who reminds her of Anna Karina - she looks so much like Karina I spent the whole movie thinking it was her. The only big problem of the film is that Vanasse is not convincing as a 13 year-old - the actress is a couple of years older than that, and looks it. She is very good, though, as an actress.

Set in 1963, Montreal, and fourteen year old Hanna, (Karine Vanasse), journeys through a bad patch in life. Her mum is mentally ill, her father is a dead end poet and her brother a little rebel but going through the same turmoil as she is. When reality fails you, you turn to the movies. In this instant, Hanna discovers Jean-Luc Godard's VIVRE SA VIE, a little gem about the exploits of a Parisian hooker, (Anna Karina). Taking on that film's persona to heighten her life, she falls into sexual misadventures. This all under the caring direction of Lea Pool, who throws in a few classic tunes of that era to brighten the mood.

"Hanna: My father is Jewish, my mother is Catholic... Judaism is passed down through the mother, so I'm not Jewish... Catholicism is passed down through the father, so I'm not Catholic either.

Teacher: Okay, I'll register you as Catholic for school."

Religion, if not religion, then the state, if not the state, then society... Down to its smallest cell... The molds they try to force us into and the labels given to us without asking our opinion...

The year is 1963 (nothing has changed today), and Hanna is growing up in Montreal. She just had her first period, which makes her life even more complicated than it already is. Also, they have no money at home because her father, the breadwinner, is a penniless writer and a Holocaust survivor. Hanna has a difficult relationship with her father and her mother, who provides the income. Hanna is also an outsider at school, an immigrant. Jean-Luc Godard's film "Vivre sa vie" is her way of escaping the world... Today, people ask me how I watch so many films... That's exactly how; when I was a child, a teenager, I was constantly listening to music and watching films to escape reality...

Despite being made in '99, the greatest success of "Emporte-moi" is that it manages to give the feeling of being a film from the 60s, the time in which its story takes place... Director Léa Pool, herself a stateless person born in Switzerland and teaching film at the Université du Québec à Montréal, has surely added biographical touches to the script.

The film is quite underrated because Roger Ebert, in his usual cantankerous manner, mercilessly criticized the film, and therefore the film was announced as Canada's Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature Film at the 72nd Academy Awards but was not nominated...

I am reminded once again why I don't care about those microorganisms called film critics.

Hanna (Karine Vanasse) is a Canadian teenager in the early sixties.And she shapes her own identity. Her parents escape from their responsibilities: her father prefers playing chess to working; and her mother is a depressive woman (several suicide attempts). That's why she decides of leading her own life. But Reality is stronger than she expected: Life bites hard...

Emporte-moi is partly an autobiographical movie. Léa Pool presents an interesting analysis of the familial relationship and adolescence. Well, this melancholy movie is very touching. Even the scene of the abandoned dog moved. Anyway, the acting is quite perfect and right. Karine Vanasse is magic, Miki Manojlovic surprising in comparison with his performance in "Underground".We can just regret the underemployment of Pascales Bussières, which is paradoxical given the closed relationship between Hanna and her mother.

Well...I have to say that anyone get out of the cinema before the closing credits:a surprise is awaiting you. I put a 8 out of 10.