After Partridge (2018), filmmaker Erwan Le Duc signs a new feature film on filiation. In her father’s daughter, Céleste Brunnquell and Nahuel Perez Biscayart form an intimate and unique duo. Presented at the end of the Critics’ Week in Cannes this Wednesday, May 24, the grace and freedom of tone of this film won over the public.
A unique bubble
It all starts with love at first sight between Valérie and Etienne, followed by incredible love affairs in Paris and… a positive pregnancy test shortly after. And here is little Rosa. Except that: after this furtive union, Valérie flies away and leaves the solo dad with the infant. “Sometimes we need to get some fresh air”, try to reassure the parents of the 20-year-old dad. Except that the break will go on forever. Despite the sadness of the absence, Etienne will assume his role as a parent alone. And if we are to believe the peaceful atmosphere that reigns within the house, he is doing quite well.
Thanks to a skilful game of flashbacks, Erwan Le Duc films with delicacy and humor this singular bubble created by the father and his daughter. “This unconditional love surrounds them, protects them and also smothers them.” explains the director.
Emancipation
Sixteen years later, little Rosa has grown up well. Here she is as a determined teenager engaged in today’s battles. She is about to leave home to study at the Beaux-Arts 300 kilometers from Paris. A new necessary step that brings up the question of separation. If the tone is rather light, Erwan Le Duc does not elude the torments of these two beings who are both strong and fragile.
Nahuel Perez Biscayart (120 beats per minute, goodbye up there) and Camille Brunnquell (The Dazzled, In Therapy) illuminate the image with their candor. Both excel on the tasty dialogues of Erwan Le Duc. We talk casually about love, sex and death. Next to Rose and Etienne, Her father’s daughter gives pride of place to secondary characters giving rise to hilarious scenes. There’s the team of amateur footballers coached by Etienne, Rosa’s boyfriend (Mohammed Louridi) who improvises as an epic poet, a marshmallow-eating estate agent friend and the town mayor (excellent Noémie Lvovsky) who farts a cable on the soccer field.
If the movie is called her father’s daughter, it might as well be called The father of her daughter as the relationship between Etienne and Rosa is bilateral and fusional. Both will grow together in this common ordeal. But rather than turn it into a melodrama, filmmaker Erwan Le Duc opts for deadpan comedy.
The sheet
Gender : Fiction
Script and production: Erwann Le Duc
Country : France
Duration : 1h31
Exit : shortly
Distributer : Pyramid
Synopsis
Etienne was barely twenty years old when he fell in love with Valérie, and hardly more when their daughter Rosa was born. The day Valérie abandons them, Etienne chooses not to make a drama out of it. Etienne and Rosa are building a happy life. Sixteen years later, when Rosa has to leave to study and we have to separate for everyone to live their own life, the past resurfaces.