La Frac­ture – first-look review

Roars of delight­ed laugh­ter met Vale­ria Bruni-Tedeschi’s cen­tral per­for­mance at the Cannes 2021 screen­ing of Cather­ine Corsini’s new film, La Frac­ture, in what must sure­ly be a con­tender for the Best Actress prize. Her char­ac­ter, Raf, a mid­dle-aged les­bian in seri­ous dan­ger of being bro­ken up with by her irate part­ner, Julie (Mari­na Foïs), has regressed to a child’s lev­el of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. One moment she is tex­ting stream-of-con­scious­ness insults to Julie while she sleeps beside her, the next she is try­ing to land a kiss as Julie ducks out of the way.

Veer­ing from slap­stick to poignant and from naughty to wretched, her con­di­tion is equal parts raw and charm­ing. We can see exact­ly why the sto­ic Julie is exas­per­at­ed with her. Foïs is excel­lent as the pok­er face to VBT’s com­ic foil, gri­mac­ing with increas­ing stormi­ness at Raf’s antics.

The dra­mat­ic con­trast between humour and seri­ous­ness is a key tenet of La Frac­ture on the lev­el of plot­ting as well as char­ac­ter. Chas­ing Julie down the street, Raf falls over and hurts her arm. She is tak­en to hos­pi­tal and thus this domes­tic vignette inter­sects with a larg­er social sit­u­a­tion. For it is the day of a huge yel­low vest protest and rat­tled police have unleashed vio­lence on demon­stra­tors, some of whom end up in ER. Deliv­ery dri­ver Yann (Pio Mar­maï) has been shot mul­ti­ple times in the leg, and anoth­er woman has been beat­en up.

Even in this sober sit­u­a­tion, Raf con­tin­ues to act as a glee­ful agent of chaos. In fact, she is more bad­ly behaved than ever, after tak­ing an excess of pain med­ica­tion. Bruni-Tedeschi deliv­ers some high act­ing for the ages, engag­ing in spir­it­ed debate with the right­eous­ly furi­ous Yann, and milk­ing Julie’s duti­ful reap­pear­ance at her side by attempt­ing a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion via meth­ods that run from seduc­tive to beg­ging. There is sim­ply no move she will not try.

Direc­tor Corsi­ni swings her cam­era from right to left, the bet­ter to doc­u­ment the extent of the crises occur­ring in the hos­pi­tal. Small char­ac­ters clam­our to be heard and the med­ical staff are giv­en per­son­al touch­es in a way that calls to mind Katell Quillévéré’s human­ist med­ical dra­ma Heal The Liv­ing. The film’s title hangs over this set­ting. Peo­ple are divided/​fractured, yet unit­ed by the need for care. A news chan­nel plays footage from the yel­low vest protest with an addi­tion­al stake aris­ing from the atten­dance of Julie’s son at an event that has drawn 124,000 souls.

As the film plays out, its polit­i­cal angle comes into clear focus. Police-inflict­ed injuries are shown in wince-induc­ing detail. Doc­tors are asked to record the names of pro­test­ers seek­ing treat­ment and have to make a deci­sion about whose side they are on. In one shock­ing moment, as police pound on the glass door to be let in, it feels as if we are watch­ing a civ­il war unfold in a place designed for heal­ing. The film’s cri­tique of state-sanc­tioned bru­tal­i­ty is stark­ly expressed.

Police behav­iour con­trasts with that of the hos­pi­tal staff who have their patients’ best inter­ests at heart, how­ev­er unruly they act. The agit­prop nature of the film’s social com­men­tary is leav­ened by the ele­ments of skewed romance, and at the same time, the far­ci­cal rela­tion­ship is made weighty by virtue of heavy themes. Some­times the tran­si­tions between plot lines feel forced or messy, yet this is a minor quib­ble with a film whose per­son­al and polit­i­cal ambi­tions are pulled off with a sat­is­fy­ing lev­el of heart.

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