Plus qu’hier moins que demain (1998) - film review

16 year old Françoise lives with her parents and her younger brother Julian in a rural French community. Françoise is in love with Bernard, the son of the owner of a successful canning factory.  Bernard hopes to take over the running of the factory one day, with Françoise as his secretary, although she dreams of becoming a singer.  One day, towards the end of summer, Françoise’s elder sister Sonia returns unexpectedly to the family, hoping to rekindle an affair with her former lover, Maurice, Bernard’s father...

This picturesque slice-of-life drama was the first full length film from Laurent Achand, a young film maker who had already established himself with his earlier short films. Achand’s style is somewhere between Bresson, Rohmer and Téchiné, featuring some sumptuous camera work and a strong sense of realism, which the director achieves by using mainly inexperienced actors and filming almost exclusively on location, almost as if he were making a documentary.

Although the film is somewhat unfocused, with perhaps just too many incidental characters and sub-plots to be entirely satisfying, it has the look and feel of a major work and is certainly an impressive debut film for Achand.  The combination of impressive naturalistic performances and restrained but eloquent photography manages to capture raw emotions, portraying the frustration and disillusionment of adolescents with a realism which is comparatively rare in contemporary cinema.

The film has won Archand critical acclaim, and a brace of rewards, including the Prix Cyril-Collard 1999 and the Grand Prix du Festival de Rotterdam 1999.

© James Travers 2001

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