La fille de son père
Erwan Le Duc, France, 2023o
Etienne, barely forty, has been abandoned by his girlfriend with a baby and has raised his daughter alone. Now the headstrong chick is eighteen, already has a boyfriend who writes poetry and is supposed to go to an art school in faraway Metz, while Etienne wants to move in with his girlfriend. But both find the transition to the new phase of their lives difficult, especially when Etienne sees a ghost from the past on a television screen.
A brief amour fou from which a daughter was born, a mother who abruptly left her husband and baby, an intimate father-daughter relationship that takes on a new form, a father who needs a new meaning when his daughter turns eightteen: It takes French director Erwan Le Duc just 9 minutes at the beginning of his second long film to unravel 18 years of his protagonist couple's life. Words? Unnecessary. The soundtrack? Fully composed. The images? Nothing but trouvailles, deliberately questioning, poetic, pointed. The unfolding tragicomedy is like its prelude. It tells of the crisis between father and daughter when the headstrong chick is sent to an art school in faraway Metz and Eteinne, half football coach, half day thief, has to vacate the family nest in favour of an airy flat with his current partner. Of course, the lost love and missing mother is the film's big blank space, but the director circles it with his dabbed-on aperçus so lightly and full of points that the small film becomes a big one. The characters have charm and wit, the dialogue and directorial ideas sparkle casually, the Nouvelle Vague and Buster Keaton send their regards. Shortly before the end, one of the most beautiful discoveries of the cinema year.
Andreas Furler