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CANNES 2007 Directors’ Fortnight / FR

All is Forgiven, except…

by 

"I work in the morning, I go for a walk in the afternoon and in the evening, I shoot up". With All is Forgiven [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: David Thion
interview: Mia Hansen-Löve
film profile
]
(Tout est pardonné), her debut feature presented this afternoon in the Directors’ Fortnight, 26 year-old French-Danish director Mia Hansen-Löve has masterfully tackled the difficult topic of drug addiction and its impact on the life of a young thirtysomething couple (an Austrian woman and her French partner) and their six year-old daughter.

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Constructed on a very solid script written by the director and on a sober and effective directing style, the film perfectly depicts the complexities of addiction (in a quasi-documentary style) and the contradictory feelings of its two main characters, authentically portrayed by Marie-Christine Friedrich and Paul Blain.

Comprising three parts ("Vienna 1995", "Return to Paris" and "Pamela, 11 years later"), All is Forgiven revolves around Victor, an eternal adolescent who dreams of being an artist, writes poems and seeks to escape reality through drugs and shooting up, which he keeps secret from his wife Annette and their daughter, Pamela.

Although very much in love, the beautiful Annette is not fooled by the disappearances of her laconic spouse, who wanders around bored in Vienna where the couple live. Well brought-up and a good father, Victor puts up an acceptable appearance for his wife’s family, while Annette hopes that things will get better when the couple return to Paris.

However, when Victor meets up with numerous junkie "friends" in the French capital, the rift between the couple only deepens. He becomes even more addicted and tortured by the feeling of being a loser, Annette finds it increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of the man she loves and despairs about and their daughter Pamela is caught in the middle.

When he leaves their home, Victor starts a vegetative life with a new, junkie partner. Annette disappears altogether leaving the country with their child, who has to wait 11 years before seeing her estranged and suicidal father again.

With various qualities (a sense of rhythm and space, its portrait of supporting characters, in particular, children), the debut feature by the former Cahiers du cinéma journalist reveals a director to watch closely.

Originally developed by Humbert Balsan, the €1.64m Les Films Pelléas production received CNCadvances of receipts of €430,000, backing from the Ile-de-France and Limousin regions and pre-sales from TPS.

The film is being sold internationally by Pyramide, who will be distributing it in French theatres in the second half of 2007.

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(Translated from French)

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