Brodeuses (2004)
Directed by Éléonore Faucher

Film Review

With its beautiful photography and introspective performances, Brodeuses is a captivating work, an impressive first full-length film from Éléonore Faucher. Before making this film, Faucher worked as a camera assistant on a number of films, including Bruno Dumont's La Vie de Jésus (1997) and Sam Karmann's Kennedy et moi (1999).

Brodeuses is an intensely involving portrait of two fragile but very different women who, through their love of the art of embroidery, form a common bond which renews their faith in life.  The delicacy of the mise-en-scène and camerawork, subtly drawing us into the main characters' world, lends an almost spiritual quality to the film that curiously offsets its earthy, cold realism.  Lola Naymark and Ariane Ascaride (taking a break from her collaborations with Robert Guédiguian) are extraordinary as the film's central characters.  With the minimum of dialogue, both actresses manage to communicate masses of feeling which says so much about what their characters have suffered and how they view the life they have been given.  For such a modest and simple film, Brodeuses is remarkably effective, filled with meaning and crafted with immense poetry. Faucher's next film, Gamines (2009), is another thoughtful and understated drama that is just as revealing of the female psyche.

Film Synopsis

Claire is 17 years old and lives in Angoulême, a town in the south west of France.  She finds it hard to get on with her parents and lives alone.  She works in a supermarket and devotes all of her leisure time to her one passion in life, embroidery.  On learning that she is five months' pregnant she decides that her only option is to give the baby up for adoption by the state.  Fearing what people will think when they see her in a visibly pregnant state, Claire appeals to the reclusive embroiderer Madame Mélikian to give her a job in her house.  The old woman is glad of the company, as she still mourns the loss of her son, who died in a motorcycle accident not long ago.  Their shared passion for embroidery brings the two women together, and through their friendship Claire begins to think differently about her impending childbirth...