French filmmaker Axelle Ropert has built up a subtly captivating body of work over the past decade, both as director of a handful of features (The Wolberg Family, Miss and the Doctors, The Apple of My Eye) and co-writer of her partner Serge Bozon’s genre-bending movies, which range from a WWI musical (La France) to a caper comedy (Tip Top) to a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Isabelle Huppert.
For her latest effort at the helm, Petite Solange, Ropert chronicles the divorce of a French couple as seen through the eyes of their 13-year-old daughter, tracking the girl’s slow disintegration as she witnesses her perfect family unravel. It’s a smart and sharply directed little drama — though perhaps too little (or petit, per the title), tackling a subject we’ve seen before without many fireworks or surprises. After premiering in Locarno last summer, the film won France’s presitgious Prix Jean Vigo in October and will be released locally this coming February.
Ropert has made something of a throwback film whose pared-down look (it was shot on 16mm by Sebastien Buchmann) nostalgic soundtrack (by Benjamin Esdraffo, channeling scores by George Delerue and Michel Legrand) and retro costumes (by Delphine Capossela) make it feel like something out of the late 1960s.
Indeed, in the junior high class where the titular heroine (Jade Springer) studies Italian, there’s a poster for Luigi Comencini’s 1966 drama Misunderstood seen on the wall, as if Ropert were citing a major reference. Her movie is less powerful than Comencini’s portrait of a son neglected by his widowed father, but it does manage to dig deep into the mind of a girl whose parents are in the process of separating, turning her world upside-down and forcing her to confront real life for the first time.
Statistics show that 50% of all French marriages end in divorce, and it’s as if Ropert had deliberately chosen an everyday story to better plumb the depths of Solange’s psyche. At first, all is copacetic in the provincial city (the film was shot in Nantes) where the girl lives with her folks and older brother, Romain (Grégoire Montana-Haroche). She goes to school, gets good grades, has fun with her bestie, hangs out in the dressing room with her actress mom (Léa Drucker) or visits her dad (Philippe Katerine) at the string instrument shop where he works beside his loyal assistant, Gina (Chloé Astor).
But there are rumblings beneath the surface — fights in the bedroom, dad sleeping on the couch, mom chain-smoking, dad getting closer to Gina — and soon enough Solange learns her parents are splitting up and selling the house. Perhaps children more conscious of the way the world works wouldn’t be so floored by such events, but Solange has idealized her family long enough to become traumatized. Yet except for one brief act of folly toward the end, she never does anything outrageous, and one of the problems with Ropert’s film is that it lacks sufficient gravitas, gliding along at times like a thoughtful afterschool special.
At its best moments, the retro vibe and observant direction recall Truffaut, but Petite Solange lacks the morbid, melancholic undercurrent of the French auteur’s work, opting for an upbeat ending that underwhelms more than it moves us. Still, Ropert does a fine job capturing Solange’s loss of innocence, and newcomer Springer provides the perfect mix of naiveté and rebellion as she portrays her character’s transformation, which is ultimately an evolution in the positive sense — a coming-of-age in an age where families are rarely what they used to be. The realization is enough of a jolt to rock Solange’s world for good, but it doesn’t necessarily do the same to us.
Director: Axelle Ropert
Screenplay: Axelle Ropert
Cast: Jade Springer, Léa Drucker, Philippe Katerine, Grégoire Montana-Haroche, Chloé Astor
Producer: Charlotte Vincent
Cinematography: Sebastien Buchmann
Production design: Valentine Gauthier Fell
Costume design: Delphine Capossela
Editing: Heloïse Pelloquet
Music: Benjamin Esdraffo
Production company: Aurora Films (France)
World sales: MK2 Films
In French
85 minutes
