Tout est pardonné (2007)
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

Film Review

Like so many highly respected auteur filmmakers before her, Mia Hansen-Løve served a term as a critic on the Cahiers du cinéma before embarking on her own career as a film director.  With two promising short films under her belt - Après mûre réflexion (2003) and Offre Spéciale (2005) - she made her feature debut with Tout est pardonné, a gently captivating portrait of the reconciliation of an estranged father and daughter.  With her first film, Hansen-Løve shows a sensitivity for her subject that betrays a profound understanding of human relationships, the very quality that will make her a supremely adept chronicler of the human condition in subsequent films, most notably her highly acclaimed Le Père de mes enfants (2009) and L'Avenir (2016).

Tout est pardonné is a modest film that deals with a fairly banal subject, but in a way that is blisteringly direct and humane.  Tacitly avoiding the kind of forced emotionality and tiresome histrionic excess that have marred similar films in recent years, Hansen-Løve focusses on the essentials and imbues her film with a delicacy of feeling that compels us to sympathise with each of the protagonists in this all too familiar tale of relationship breakdown and nervous reconciliation.

Understated performances from the three lead actors - Paul Blain, Marie-Christine Friedrich and Constance Rousseau - strengthened by Hansen-Løve's sensitive writing and unobtrusive but incredibly effective mise-en-scène, allow us to see the family trauma from three contrasting angles and appreciate the full extent of the emotional crises that ensue.  Heartwarming but never slushy, meaningful without seeming intellectually contrived, Tout est pardonné is an extraordinary work for a first time director.  It was a worthy recipient of the Prix Louis-Delluc for first feature in 2007, revealing a talented new auteur filmmaker of immense charm and power.

Film Synopsis

In the mid-1990s, Victor, a journalist, lives with his partner, Anette, and their six-year-old daughter, Pamela, in Vienna.  Their life together is far from idyllic and gradually the couple find they are drifting apart.  Bored to distraction by his lacklustre career as a writer, Victor abandons his work and spends his empty hours in idle pursuits, frittering away the little money he has on futile pleasures.  Despite the gulf that is opening up between them, Annette still remains attached to her husband and is confident that when they move to Paris things will improve for them both.  It soon becomes apparent that Annette is once again deluding herself.

The couple have barely been in France a few months before Victor is back to his old ways, taking drugs and failing to keep up with his work.  By this stage there can be no doubt that the relationship is over.  The couple end up rowing ferociously and Victor moves in with a drug addict he has taken a fancy to.  Unable to take any more, Annette walks out on her husband, taking her little daughter with her.  For the next eleven years, the estranged husband and wife hear nothing of each other.  Now, Pamela is 17 and is living in Paris with her mother.  By chance, she discovers that her father is in the neighbourhood.  How can she resist seeing him again...?