Love Like Poison
Un poison violent
“Life, death, desire and teenage confusion fuel a contemplative, atmospheric drama with a streak of rebellious black humour.” — Jonathan Romney,LondonFilm Festival
Producer: Justin Taurand
Screenplay: Katell Quillévéré, Mariette Désert
Photography: Tom Harari
Editor: Thomas Marchand
Music: Olivier Mellano
In French with English subtitles
With: Clara Augarde (Anna), Lio (Jeanne), Michel Galabru (Jean), Stefano Cassetti (Père François), Thierry Neuvic (Paul), Youen Leboulanger-Gourvil (Pierre)
Festivals: Cannes (Directors’ Fortnight), London 2010
The intimate, finessed female coming-of-age drama is a French speciality. This notable new example directed and co-written by Katell Quillévéré endows a teenage girl’s apprehensions about sex, death and the love of Jesus with an empathetic sense of adolescence as a solitary pursuit. Fourteen-year-old Anna has returned from boarding school to her village in Brittany where she stays with her mother and her ailing but pagan-spirited paternal grandfather. It seems that sex is in the air everywhere she looks – church included. A pipsqueak choirboy hits on her; her mother’s devotion to the youthful local priest is not strictly ecclesiastical. Quillévéré keeps us on tenterhooks while Anna observes what’s preoccupying the adults, keeps her own counsel and weighs the seemliness of her own brushes with ecstasy. — BG
“Quillévéré mixes this heady brew of contradictory emotions with great delicacy and attentiveness to fine detail.” — Dave Jenkins, Time Out
View the trailer at Flicks.co.nz