Catherine Frot

Misericordia

by
Jérémie

So here’s France’s best film of 2024, in the esteemed Cahiers du Cinéma’s estimation at any rate. Which may come as a surprise to many in the anglosphere, where Misericordia came and went without making much of a stir, as Alain Guiraudie’s films so often do. It’s a slight return to Guiraudie’s most well received film (a finger in the air poll only), 2013’s Stranger by the Lake, which set a “cosy” murder mystery at a secluded countryside spot where gay men convene to have sex with each other. Guiraudie opened that film with shots of penises in mid frame and continued in much the same vein, the Poirot-esque murder investigation regularly taking … Read more

The Page Turner

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Catherine Frot and Déborah François in The Page Turner

It’s often forgotten how much genre output the French make, and how well they do it. This icy thriller in a Chabrolesque mould has two brilliant performances at its centre. On the one side we have Déborah François as Mélanie, a young girl from a poor family whose ambition to become a pianist is ruined at an audition which goes so badly that she gives up playing for good. And on the other side we have Catherine Frot as the reason it went so badly, as Ariane, the famous pianist who is so blithely unaware of what the audition means for Mélanie that she signs an autograph for an adoring fan halfway through, … Read more