Jeune Femme – first look review

How on earth is she going to keep this up? That’s the ques­tion, posed inter­nal­ly, that sprang to mind while watch­ing the gen­tly delight­ful debut fea­ture Jeune Femme. The ​“she” is ambigu­ous though: does it refer to direc­tor Léonor Ser­raille, who bold­ly opens her film at the moment her lead char­ac­ter reach­es the vio­lent peak of a ner­vous break­down? Or is it a ref­er­ence to motor-mouthed lead actor Laeti­tia Dosch, who plays the epony­mous ​‘Jeune Femme’ Paula like a red-head­ed tor­na­do hurtling through the grot­ty streets of Paris?

Keep it up they both do, as the film tra­vers­es the unsight­ly ruins of Paula’s ear­ly thir­ties and just keeps throw­ing up amus­ing sit­u­a­tions and stim­u­lat­ing char­ac­ter inter­ac­tions. The film plays like an assured Amer­i­can com­e­dy with its quick-fire pac­ing and con­ven­tion­al, redemp­tive arc. But the film is pure French in its tone and atmos­phere – it’s a love let­ter to Paris, but one writ­ten in a con­coc­tion of red wine, blood and cat food.

Paula is a sham­bol­ic mess who man­ages to instant­ly alien­ate every­one every­one around her. She blurts out awk­ward truths to friends look­ing to help her and is then turned out once more onto her ear. She attempts to explain to a doc­tor that she’s not insane with per­haps the most bizarre, free form, ram­bling mono­logue imag­in­able, before becom­ing phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive and in need of seda­tion. She’s like the mangy, one-eyed cat with an unsight­ly facial scar that peo­ple just habit­u­al­ly boot from their door­way and into the night.

Talk­ing of cats, the only liv­ing being she can rely on is a pearl-coloured fur ball called Machacha who she nabs from her pho­tog­ra­ph­er boyfriend after her kicks her out. Although this feline char­ac­ter is dealt with in a direct, unsen­ti­men­tal way, Ser­raille plays off its essen­tial cute­ness against the fact that it serves no real func­tion in Paula’s life except as a phys­i­cal annoy­ance for her ex.

As the sto­ry rolls on, Paula tries des­per­ate­ly to piece her life back togeth­er, but cru­cial­ly she doesn’t ever sub­mit to change. Her life takes some major swerves which she choses to take with­in her errat­ic stride. Sure, she moves away from the dark, dark place in which we see her at the film’s open, but remains the same per­son with the same ideals, unwill­ing to be sub­merged in social niceties but under­stand­ing that she needs to con­form just a lit­tle bit in order to survive.

Dosch is a rev­e­la­tion. She embod­ies the char­ac­ter so ful­ly that it’s hard to see where she ends and Paula begins. It’s a high­ly enter­tain­ing turn and there would prob­a­bly be no film with­out it. But even though she’s a tremen­dous com­ic actor, work­ing ver­bal inflec­tions and sub­tle facial expres­sions for all they’re worth, this is above all a por­trait of a frac­tured woman unable to sup­press her per­son­al­i­ty for indi­vid­ual gain. The film played in the Un Cer­tain Regard strand of the fes­ti­val, but like so many of the oth­er side­bar fea­tures in 2017, it would’ve held its head up very high in a large­ly weak com­pe­ti­tion line-up. Dosch cer­tain­ly deserves an act­ing prize.