Larry Oliver Film Reviews

Pictured : Bookshop owner Sandra ( Valeria Bruni Tedeschi ) joins six-year-old Alex ( César Botti ) under the table in a scene from the French drama ' L'Attachement ' adapted from Alice Ferney 's novel, ' L’Intimité'  by screenwriters  Raphaële Moussafir , Agnès Feuvre and director Carine Tardieu , working with scenario consultant Agnès de Sacy . Still courtesy of Diaphana Distribution (France). French director Carine Tardieu’s film, L’Attachement (clunky English title The Ties That Bind Us ) is exceptional. In it, the characters spend two years of their time, and 106 minutes of ours, doing the right thing whilst processing or responding to considerable emotional pain. Adapted from Alice Ferney’s 2020 novel, L’Intimité , by Tardieu working with co-writers Raphaële Moussafir, Agnès Feuvre and scenario consultant Agnès de Sacy, it stars Valeria Bruni Tedeschi – always a good reason to watch a movie – as Sandra, an unmarried woman in her fifties who runs a femin...

  A director’s past work is no indication of what they might produce. This is abundantly true of Primaire ( Elementary ) directed by Hélène Angel from a screenplay she wrote with Yann Coridian, Olivier Gorce and Agnès De Sacy. Set in Grenoble in France, a city in south-eastern France close to the French Alps, it describes the struggle to a young primary school teacher, Florence (Sara Forestier, redefined by this movie) to balance life and work. Both are thrown out of whack by two events. Her ex-husband wants their ten-year-old son Denis (Albert Cousi) to travel with him to Asia. Then a troubled kid, Sacha (Ghillas Bendjoudi) abandoned by her mother ends up having a fixation of her. Throw in a class inspection, a pupil who struggles with reading, Greek myth, a difficulty with the special needs assistant who is coaxing one pupil a little too much and an Oriental food delivery guy, and there is a super abundance of incident to keep viewers absorbed over the film’s 105-minute running t...