Docteur Françoise Gailland (1976) - film review

In the course of her career, Françoise Gailland has earned herself a reputation as a formidable medical practitioner, highly respected at the Paris hospital where she works.  But this professional success has come at a price.  She has neglected her family, to the extent that she is virtually estranged from her husband and teenage children.  When she is diagnosed with lung cancer, Françoise decides to set the record straight, whilst she still has time...

Were it not for its prestigious cast and a remarkable performance from its lead actress, Docteur Françoise Gailland would be a hard sell, a virtual parody of those tears-and-fears hospital dramas that came into vogue in the 1970s and never seemed to go away.  This was probably the nadir of director Jean-Louis Bertucelli’s short filmmaking career (he later had more success making TV movies and series for French television) and yet, despite its obvious shortcomings (not least of which is a superabundance of tacky clichés, of both the script and directorial variety) the film holds up surprisingly well, and does so almost entirely on the strength of Annie Girardot’s powerhouse performance.  Watching Girardot in this film is a brutal experience, not just because her portrayal is so convincing, but because it conveys something we can all relate to, the necessity of putting one’s house in order to achieve a meaningful existence.  Things only go awry when the manhandled plot contrivances start to get in the way and the melodrama goes into overdrive

This is the film that won Annie Giradot her Best Actress César in 1977 (her only win in this category, although she did subsequently pick up two Best Supporting Actress Césars) and contributed to her standing as an icon of French cinema in the 1970s.  In that decade, Giradot acquired a reputation for playing strong-willed career women who were both resilient and sensitive, the humane face of France’s feminist movement.  This is why the part of Françoise Gailland suits her so well, so well that it allows her to give what is probably her most sympathetic screen performance.  You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by her character’s reaction to the news that she has a life-threatening cancerous growth, and there are some equally powerful moments throughout the film.  The surfeit of acting talent that surrounds Girardot (Jean-Pierre Cassel, François Périer, Isabelle Huppert, Suzanne Flon...) may have helped to sell the film, but it is pretty superfluous.  Annie Girardot monopolises our attention from the moment she first appears on the screen, and she does doesn’t release us from her spell until the end credits roll.

© James Travers 2011

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