Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 5 June

Between Two Worlds (Carrère, 2022)

With the French Film Festival Aotearoa still going strong in loc­al cinemas, I thought I would take anoth­er look at past events and see what titles are access­ible to us now.

Between Two Worlds (aka Ouistreham) was in the 2022 fest­iv­al and was the best of the three that I pre­viewed for RNZ:

The English title is bland but I know why it’s needed. Ouistreham is the port for the city of Caen, home to a busy ferry ter­min­al which becomes the centre of the story but requires more explan­a­tion to non-French people than is ideal.

At the begin­ning of the film a slightly dishevelled Juliette Binoche presents at what we used to call the Labour Exchange to find out how to re-enter the work­force after dec­ades as a pampered (and unqual­i­fied) house­wife. A recent – sur­prise – divorce has left her without means in a new town and only the parade of zero-hour, cas­u­al, mostly clean­ing jobs that are avail­able seem to be the only way to get back on her feet. But there’s some­thing a bit off about her story and her voi­ceover adds to the mystery.

It turns out that she is a fam­ous author going under­cov­er among the loc­al pre­cari­at, min­ing mater­i­al for a new book of social and polit­ic­al com­ment. She has an agenda and the story she has con­cocted at least explains why she is so use­less at the kind of back break­ing com­mer­cial clean­ing she has to do.

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As a good journ­al­ist she cul­tiv­ates her sources and – like a good cent­ral char­ac­ter in any French film – she finds mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships among those sources, espe­cially hard-working single mom Chrystèle (Hélène Lambert, like every­one in the film apart from Ms. Binoche, a first time performer).

For much of the film I was wor­ried that it was fall­ing vic­tim to the same flaws as its prot­ag­on­ist – pat­ron­ising the work­ing class, the “real people”, while tak­ing advant­age of them at the same time. But after a while I real­ised that Emmanuel Carrère’s film (based on a real piece of journ­al­ism) is aware of that risk and is, in fact, about that risk. The end­ing – unre­solved and emo­tion­ally unsat­is­fy­ing – is dra­mat­ic­ally per­fect and that bland English title might be more appro­pri­ate than I gave it cred­it for.

Also reviewed in that column, Jean Dujardin stretches his tre­mend­ous on-screen cha­risma almost to break­ing point in OSS 117: From Africa With Love (a slightly dodgy 60s spy spoof) and in The Villa, Gérard Depardieu is a former box­er in a Paris rest home who befriends the young com­munity ser­vice kid (Kev Adams) who dis­cov­ers the resident’s are being mis­treated. Between them they organ­ise a break­out lead­ing to a clas­sic “oldies behav­ing badly” movie.

Where to watch Between Two Worlds

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision or Apple

Australia: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon, Google or YouTube

Canada: Not cur­rently available

Ireland: Digital rent­al from Apple, Sky, Rakuten, Curzon or Google

USA: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon or Fandango

UK: Streaming on BFI Plater or digit­al rental