Catherine Breillat has created a powerful film, in terms of both form and subject. Her mise-en-scene tells the story with very little dialogue. The director gets a lot across and tells the story without resorting to explicit dialogue, using only the mise-en-scène, which is, of course, what cinema is all about: telling the story through the mise-en-scène.
The other strength of the film is its theme and subject matter: a family in which father, mother and children are mutually involved in drama. Note that this is a remake of a 2019 Danish film (Dronningen, by May El-Toukhy).
Léa Drucker carries the film, as it is the story of her character, who evolves, or not, over the course of the story, who is the most exciting, central therefore and is the one in every scene. She appears cold in her professional setting, and evolves throughout the film, as she interacts with her son-in-law, the source of the film's main dramatic arc. She's in control, whoever she's talking to: her husband, her daughters, her sister, her son-in-law. Even if he's going to put her in danger.
The advantage of the film is that, as viewers, we may imagine the story's possible evolution, as well as its possible endings, but the script and Catherine Breillat are capable of making the story evolve or conclude in a way we hadn't imagined.
The other strength of the film is its theme and subject matter: a family in which father, mother and children are mutually involved in drama. Note that this is a remake of a 2019 Danish film (Dronningen, by May El-Toukhy).
Léa Drucker carries the film, as it is the story of her character, who evolves, or not, over the course of the story, who is the most exciting, central therefore and is the one in every scene. She appears cold in her professional setting, and evolves throughout the film, as she interacts with her son-in-law, the source of the film's main dramatic arc. She's in control, whoever she's talking to: her husband, her daughters, her sister, her son-in-law. Even if he's going to put her in danger.
The advantage of the film is that, as viewers, we may imagine the story's possible evolution, as well as its possible endings, but the script and Catherine Breillat are capable of making the story evolve or conclude in a way we hadn't imagined.