L’Équipier (2004)

L’Équipier is a French romantic film drama first released in 2004, directed by Philippe Lioret.  The film stars Sandrine Bonnaire, Philippe Torreton, Grégori Derangère, Émilie Dequenne and Anne Consigny.  It has also been released under the title: The Light.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


After the death of her mother, Camille returns to Ouessant, a small island off the coast of Finistère, to sell her family home.  There she meets her elderly aunt and discovers a novel written by someone named Antoine Cassendi which recounts a story that took place on the island forty years before.  In 1963, Cassendi arrived on Ouessant, after having served in the Algerian War, to take up a post as a lighthouse keeper, under the tutelage of Yvon Le Guen.   The outsider receives a frosty, even hostile reception from everyone he meets – everyone that is except Mabé, Yvon’s attractive young wife, who cannot help falling in love with the sympathetic stranger...

Director Philippe Lioret surpasses himself with this elegiac love story set on a storm ravaged Breton island, a beautifully composed, exquisitely performed drama which tells a simple tale of an ill-fated romance with great tenderness and realism.  The bleak windswept setting provides an appropriate backdrop for the tale of impossible love, the vulnerability of the lighthouse men echoing the fragility of the characters who end up being caught up in the storms of amorous passion.  Some stunning photography and gripping performances – particularly from Grégori Derangère and Philippe Torreton – make this an absorbing film, impressing with its raw humanity and understated yet potent sense of poetry.

© James Travers 2007

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