OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Enchantingly led by Catherine Deneuve and her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni, this sly and exquisitely romantic musical-drama from writer/director Christophe Honoré (Love Songs, Inside Paris) spans over four decades as it follows a mother and daughter’s twin misadventures in love.
In Paris, 1964, carefree young Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) steals a gorgeous pair of high heels, and whilst wearing them is mistaken for an escort – an error that signals the next direction her life will take. But she soon falls for and marries a suave Czech doctor Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic), leaving Paris for Prague. Thirty years later we follow Madeleine’s daughter, Vera (Mastroianni), a lovely but reckless young woman whose romantic life is no simpler than that of her mother. She has a sometime-lover Clément (Louis Garrel) but on a trip to London falls for an American (Paul Schneider), a man who’ll prove incapable of devoting himself to her. Meanwhile in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (now played by Miloš Forman)…
Influenced by Jacques Demy but with style all his own, Honoré has made a film of many delights, not least of which is the sight of Deneuve’s character strolling through Paris, singing through tears and revisiting her reckless youth.
