La beauté du geste

A lyrical look at a challenge shared by people of all orientations across time: the lesbian break-up.

Two friends meet after 15 years. They have a complicated and intimate past that becomes impossible to deny in spite of intentions to the contrary.

Mr. Turgeon is a lonely bachelor. When his fantasies about a female companion fail to materialize, he tries to fill the void with an overabundance of consumer goods. There is nothing in his life but the raucous music of his neighbours. A digital urban tale with the naïve style of paper cut-outs, Lonesome Monsieur Turgeon is an amusing but sympathetic portrait of a man who feels all alone in the world. If only he could connect with the people around him.

A girl with a broken heart seeks refuge among friends to overcome her pain. Unfortunately, she fails at the task and then, she decides to undetake a treatment: a detoxification of love.

Ariane lives in the same rented apartment she lived in as a student. She loves her neighborhood, its residents and shop owners. One day, she receives notice from her landlord that she has to leave. Total shock! She has six months. Her Parisian girlfriend follows the sad story at a distance while her friends, Mireille, Charles and Louise, rally to help her sort her things. Meanwhile, rents in the area have skyrocketed in this highly sought-after neighborhood. What to do? She must resolve to look farther afield.

Chronicle of the daily life of a 40 years old student, during a year spent in Paris, where animation, documentary and fiction mix to give an account of the assessments that one can make halfway through her life with irony and tenderness.

In 1996, four-year-old Victoire Thivisol was for many the surprise winner of the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival for her leading role in Jacques Doillon’s Ponette. How could an infant run off with this award? The documentary Playing Ponette shows how patiently Doillon worked with her, from the first disastrous day of shooting up to the triumph in Venice. Playing Ponette consists almost entirely of material that was filmed with the black-and-white camera of the video assist on the set of Ponette. The quality is not up to much, but in all that raw material - rehearsals, several takes and footage in between the shots - we can discern a meditation about the mystery of acting. One moment Thivisol is romping playfully on the set, less than a minute later she is highly concentrated and embodies very convincingly the role of the girl who has to learn to cope with the recent death of her mother, while she doesn’t understand the concept of death.