La place d'une autre

I am very surprised to be the first one to write a review about this beautiful French drama.

It is beautifully told story with very performances of the leading actresses. Also a very believable history drama with nice shot scenery round the first world war.

I could only recommand this movie, the best one that I have seen for a while, better than Licorice Pizza, C'mon C'mon and Un Monde.

A fiction spun out of any earlier fiction, this is not a work to judge by logic, being a current French film set in the First World War, an era no living person can now remember, and based on an unsettling English novel from 1873 that played with the fluid boundaries between the criminal and the comfortable classes, the sane citizens and the lunatics, the I and the Other, all shot through with existential dread of finding oneself forced into or trapped within the shadow category.

Layers of creativity separate the story from present-day reality, so don't look for authenticity or bald credibility but watch it for mood. For the continual ambivalences of plot and character, for conversations that illuminate or obfuscate, for the immaculate visuals that so often are in confined or ill-lit spaces, for the score which subtly accompanies the conflicting desires of the individuals. Accept the closing paradox, where genuine love is only realised by escaping responsibilities. More than a touch melodramatic and Victorian perhaps, but that is an honourable genre which many of us enjoy.

The subject of the impostor who wants to enter a milieu that is not his or hers is not new :think William Irish 's " I married a dead man" , Boileau-Narcejac' s "les louves",Josephine Tey's "Brat Farrar "or Daphné Du Maurier's "the scapegoat "......By and large the screenplay does not compare favorably with the above-mentioned works and features a predictable bland denouement.

It is a mixed bag : the atmosphere of the gloomy days of WW1 is well rendered ; Sabine Azéma is like a good wine : she becomes better as years go by;here she really makes the best of a cardboard part , making her eyes longing for someone to love ; ditto for Maud Wyler (no relation to the great director) whose accusing finger she puts at her usurper in the best scene of the movie gives gooseflesh ; to be denied your identity is the worst thing that can happen to you and I -who,in the screenwriter's mind apparently- should be supposed to support the destitute child , actually side with the dismissed educated girl ;it's her treatment which is unbearable ,try to be in her shoes !And the best moments belong to her!

On the other hand ,Lyna Khoudra 's inexpressive performance does not win me over ; her character is hardly believable ; the scene where she reads the chapters of "les misérables" when Jean Valjean passes himself off as respectable Monsieur Madeleine is too contrived .That a poor girl can become a go -getter to cope with a ruthless society makes sense; but that an uneducated girl turns overnight into a lit connaisseur less so ....

A curate's egg !Not bad but not great either.....