Feature – International / UK Premiere

Showing @ Filmhouse 3, Sat 18 June @ 21:45 & Filmhouse 1, Tue 21 June @ 18:05

Alix Delaporte / France / 2010 / 88 mins

First time director Alix Delaporte could have fallen into the storytelling trap when depicting the “against all odds” relationship of the film’s titled protagonists; though it needs a lot of work, she just saves it with a fairly graceful and understated account of working-class hardships and bleak devotion. After down-and-out Angèle (Clotilde Hesme) moves to a small fishing village in Normandy for both employment and to seduce local troller Tony (Grégory Gadebois), the pair’s relationship blossoms under a sexualised veil of sheer human perseverance. And as Angèle attempts to balance her deprived social life with visiting her son, her quest for acceptance and success is both heartening and absorbing.

With its overcast tinge and sea-air veil, the film has a kind of dull beauty. Yet for such a delicate and quite rich film, it’s a shame that its composition and dialogue are frustratingly slow. No doubt attempting to reflect the ripening of a nascent relationship, the action can’t keep up with the film’s swift narrative, and though the soundtrack featuring a lone electric guitar and harrowing solo piano both haunts and charms, it cannot save the film’s vacuous sentiment about love adrift in the sea of conflicting personal troubles. The film occasionally alludes to its more interesting working-class theme, with scenes of enraged fisherman protesting against government quotas in the face of riot police, but this only feels present to boost the film’s meaning and potency. In a lot of ways, the smartly tricky plot has legs to explore how social situations can dictate the type of relationships we form, but fails to really hit the mark in an otherwise plush and at times elegant film.