Screened as part of NZIFF 2017

A Woman’s Life 2016

Une vie

Directed by Stéphane Brizé

In a literary adaptation styled with striking immediacy, Stéphane Brizé relates the tragedy of an adventurous young 19th-century noblewoman harshly judged for an unfortunate marriage.

Belgium / France In French with English subtitles
119 minutes DCP

Director

Producers

Miléna Poylo
,
Gilles Sacuto

Screenplay

Stéphane Brizé
,
Florence Vignon. Based on the novel by Guy de Maupassant

Photography

Antoine Héberlé

Editor

Anne Klotz

Production designer

Valérie Saradjian

Costume designer

Madeline Fontaine

Music

Olivier Baumont

With

Judith Chemla (Jeanne)
,
Jean-Pierre Darroussin (the Baron)
,
Yolande Moreau (the Baroness)
,
Swann Arlaud (Julien)
,
Nina Meurisse (Rosalie)
,
Olivier Perrier (Abbot Picot)
,
Clotilde Hesme (Gilberte de Fourville)
,
Alain Beigel (Georges de Fourville)
,
Finnegan Oldfield (Paul
,
20 years)
,
Lucette Beudin (servant Ludivine)
,
Jérôme Lanne (doctor)
,
Mélie Deneuve (wet nurse)

Festivals

Venice
,
Toronto
,
Busan 2016

Awards

Critics’ Prize
,
Venice Film Festival 2016

Director Stéphane Brizé (Mademoiselle ChambonThe Measure of a Man) applies his keen eye for social observation to costume drama with this striking adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s first published novel. A young aristocrat named Jeanne (Judith Chemla) raised and educated by kind, progressive parents seems poised on the brink of modern womanhood, but finds herself ill-prepared for a feckless husband and a pious, hypocritical society. Scrutinising its characters with startling intimacy, A Woman’s Life avoids melodrama in its tender yet incisive portrayal of her passing joys, pressures and disappointments.

“The pathos and wonder of A Woman’s Life comes from its recognition that Jeanne is at once a captive of cruel circumstances and a wilful, intelligent human being. Her kinship with other 19th-century fictional heroines – Emma Bovary, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina – is evident. She suffers, but she also reads, thinks and desires, and strives to find a zone of freedom within boundaries dictated by fate and society.

There are a few dramatic incidents, including outbreaks of emotional and physical violence, but the real action in the film is interior, and Mr Brizé’s greatest skill is his ability to imply the deep and complicated emotions beneath the placid, decorous surface of Jeanne. A Woman’s Life... moves calmly and deliberately, but it never feels slow. Instead, its images and scenes are suffused by an intensity that seems almost to be a quality of the light and air as they play across Ms Chemla’s watchful, sometimes inscrutable features.” — A.O. Scott, NY