The resemblance between Judith Godrèche and her daughter Tess Barthélemy — additionally the luminous lead of her mom’s debut function “A Girl’s Life” — can be notably highly effective for anybody conversant in Godrèche’s teenage breakthrough function within the 1990 Jacques Doillon drama “The Disenchanted.” Watching the doe-eyed Barthélémy on this assured adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel of the identical title, one can’t assist however draw parallels between this bitter story of sexual initiation and the experiences of Godrèche’s personal life, particularly the accusations of sexual abuse she lodged towards Doillon (and the director Bênoit Jacquot) in addition to her standing, at present, as one of the vital notable champions of France’s #MeToo motion.
However consistent with Ernaux’s imaginative and prescient, the place extraordinarily intimate, first-person narratives tackle a collective, deliberately universalizing, sweep, “A Girl’s Life” succeeds not simply as a haunting echo of Godrèche’s early years however as a shifting, at instances disturbing, meditation on the gender relations that normalize violence towards ladies — particularly the form of violence that’s onerous to acknowledge till effectively after the harm is finished.
Bookended by voiceover narration drawn straight from Ernaux’s novel, delivered by a septuagenarian model of the author carried out by Valérie Dréville, the movie primarily tells the story of Annie at 17 (Barthélemy) in the summertime of 1958. Along with her fishbowl glasses and main candy tooth, girlish Annie is a sheltered dreamer craving to flee the Catholic restrictions of her smalltown existence and “find her people,” which she expects will occur within the sunny months away from dwelling throughout her first stint as a camp counselor in coaching.
There, her enthusiasm is straight away met with hostility from the opposite counselors: imply ladies in plaid skirts and lipstick and even crueler boys who suppose with their, uh, genitals. Their chief is a stocky, Brando-esque blond named ‘H’ (Victor Bonnel), who — as predicted, given his repeated desire for the ‘new girl’ every summer time — units his sights on our heroine. Annie is thrilled, however she doesn’t count on to strip off her garments fairly so rapidly, in an uncomfortably blunt and nearly wordless sequence that leads the couple from a cavern celebration to the dual mattress in Annie’s shared dormitory. There may be nothing romantic about her first time previous first base, however Annie is blind to her personal mistreatment, or at the least satisfied it’s a part of the method.
“A Girl’s Life” joins a cluster of latest Ernaux-inspired works, amongst them Danielle Arbid’s “Simple Passion” (2020), an acclaimed stage rendering of “The Years” that premiered in 2022, and the home-video documentary “The Super 8 Years” (2022), written by Ernaux and directed by her son David Ernaux-Briot. However the Nobel Prize winner’s most auspicious adaptation thus far is likely Audrey Diwan’s 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner “Happening” (2021): That movie, a vérité-style account of a college pupil’s unlawful abortion in Sixties France, takes place a couple of years after the occasions of “A Girl’s Story” within the timeline of Ernaux’s life mapped out by her books.
Barthélemy’s Annie could also be youthful than Anamaria Vartolomei’s protagonist Anne in “Happening,” however the stretch of time coated by Godrèche’s movie gives the younger actress a equally sturdy alternative to showcase her dramatic chops. Impressively, she goes from a dorky (however nonetheless quick-witted) harmless, à la Taylor Dearden in “The Pitt,” to broken and delusional, with one thing of a younger Winona Ryder’s manic glint in her eyes.
The cinematographer Joachim Philippe retains his digicam near Annie’s face and captures, as if from her perspective, the drunken partying and canoodling that appears to occur each night. Sluggish-motion and twilight neons initially give these scenes a romantic edge that turns misleading and nefarious. One recurring picture underscores the traumatic ugliness of Annie’s arguably consensual rendezvous with H: a buzzing, dangling lightbulb shot from her perspective, trying up from beneath his physique. In the meantime, Godrèche’s script gives a provocatively nuanced depiction of Annie’s psychological decline: She is as a lot a sufferer of groupthink as she is brainwashed into self-harm by the fantasies bought to younger ladies about belonging and romance.
Godrèche digs deep into these masochistic behaviors so widespread amongst heterosexual relationships of Ernaux’s era; her layered, empathetic method to those knotty emotions is the movie’s best advantage. Different parts are half-baked: a nurse performed by Guslagie Malanda (“Saint Omer,” “The Beast”) is launched as a attainable mentor determine, solely to float away inconsequentially. Annie, whom the cool-kid counselors dismiss as a rustic bumpkin, strikes up a friendship with one other marginalized gal: a redhead (Maïwène Barthélémy) coded as a lesbian and in addition resigned to the background somewhat expediently.
A corny, self-aggrandizing coda — positioning the principle occasions of the movie inside the context of Ernaux’s profession and the feminist awakenings of the next century — feels stretched-out and, frankly, considerably compulsory. Nonetheless, after sticking Annie so deeply within the psychological trenches, gesturing to the sunshine on the finish of the tunnel can also be welcome. A woman not solely tells her story, however she lives to be taught from it, too.
