#justinetriet

A few weeks ago, we began our exploration of the contemporary French author comedy through the presentation of three movies, eccentric nevertheless in tune with the current social and political climate.

This week, I have the pleasure to introduce you to another aspect of the French author comedy, which has been essential to the renewal of the genre: feminist comedies.

What is particularly interesting with the reinvention of the comedy of manners by women filmmakers such as Valérie Donzelli, Justine Triet or Sophie Letourneur, is that they add to the general social criticism a satire of the relations of power between men and women. With a lot of humor, a touch of sarcasm and a pinch of self-mockery, these filmmakers brilliantly deconstruct the clichés related to love relationships and to women’s place in society.

Without further delay, let’s discover together these refreshing, destabilizing and above all feminist comedies !

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La bataille de Solferino by Justine Triet

"How do you reinvent yourself, how do you deal with truth and lies by making movies? " Justine Triet

For her first feature, La bataille de Solferino (2013), Justine Triet managed to create a movie that can be situated between the intimate chronicle and the collective epic by telling the story of a couple torn apart in a very trivial and realistic way.

The plot, both simple and complex, tells the following story:

Sunday May 6, 2012. Laetitia, a journalist for a 24-hour news channel, has to cover the second round of the presidential election and sets up her camera in front of the headquarters of the Socialist Party in Paris, rue de Solferino. She therefore called on a (male) baby-sitter to look after her two young daughters. But her ex-husband Vincent is determined to see his daughters despite  Laetitia’s ban. Therefore, an intimate battle and a collective one are then waged head on.

What is brilliant about this comedy, which starts out more like a drama, is that the viewer is never able to anticipate the actions to come. The events follow one another, we go from a laughing fit between Laetitia and her baby-sitter to a nervous breakdown in the rue de Solferino, ending with a tearful fight between Laetitia and her ex-husband Vincent. Entering the messy daily life of a Parisian family, La bataille de Solferino quickly makes us understand that the film will have nothing to do with Napoleonic battles. Other wars are at play in this first exciting movie, documenting conflicts at multiple levels: intimate (child custody conflict between two divorced parents), political (it's the day of the second round of the presidential election), aesthetic (between tension and humor, fiction and documentary).

What is constantly surprising in Justine Triet's first feature film is the complete porosity between narrative and reality, fictional characters and real people, simulated violence and actual danger. In the film, it's all about intrusion, about reversals of situations. The laughter is not caused by visual gags but rather by the dysfunctional relationships among the characters and by their constant mood swings.

The great success of the film is therefore its fluid mix of fiction, humor and documentary, which sometimes makes it impossible to distinguish what is written and planned from what is captured live on election day. Mixing fiction, documentary and humor is not so easy, but Justine Triet handles it brilliantly.

The documentary-fiction combination begins with the characters, who have the same first names as the actors (Vincent Macaigne and Laetitia Dosch). And Triet's bordering on frenzy direction contributes greatly to this hybridation. The intimate space is filmed like a live report, forming a seamless continuum with the locations of the presidential countdown. While Laetitia is counting the scores of the two candidates, she makes an inventory of her relationship with Vincent. And as she struggles between her interview and her ex-husband, the film gains humorous twists and turns while Laetitia gains self-affirmation. It is finally through the intrusion of fictional sequences in the heart of an uncontrollable live event that the incisive humor and message of the movie emerges and spreads.