Showing in the Cannes Un Certain Regard section, Léonor Serraille makes her directorial feature debut with Jeune Femme; and what a debut it is. In a year that Cannes purportedly aims to focus on women directors, Serraille is surely one that we’ll be seeing plenty of on the festival circuit and beyond in the future. And as she said when presenting the film, hopefully the gender factor and the term ‘female director’ will become a discussion point of the past. That said, Jeune Femme is an unashamedly woman’s film with a predominantly female cast and crew. But don’t let the words ‘woman’s film’ deter you: this is a fantastic film on all levels, not least its lead, Laetitia Dosch.
Dosch plays Paula and we first meet her trying to bash down her ex’s door, head-butting it and landing herself in hospital. As the frazzled woman tries to explain her relationship to the doctor, we worry that this unhinged and fragile woman may be on the road to being committed or to committing suicide. She steals her boyfriend’s cat, gets kicked out of her friend’s house, has no money and when she checks in to a seedy hotel, it looks bad for our heroine. But as the film progresses, and as Paula drags herself up and out of one difficult situation after another, we see her not so much as unhinged as unique.
Dosch is in every scene of this film and she fills each one. Her nutty, stream of consciousness rambling (and kudos here to Serraille for her phenomenal screenplay) and her reasoning that is so beautifully rational make her a compelling character. Even when she behaves badly to a friend, that crazy logic of hers shows that what she did was not so bad after all. As Paula, Dosch is a force of nature, and she imbues the film with an essential vibrancy. If 2017 is the Cannes year of the woman, then surely there is no better film than this one to prove it. Chapeau, ladies, for giving us one of the films – and certainly one of the performances – of the festival.