Hmmm. Fashion designer and film producer-patron Agnès B here makes her self-conscious directing debut: her story idea, co-scripted by her and screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, who has worked with Claire Denis and Leos Carax. It’s a strange, naive work, with something fundamentally misjudged about the drama, characterisation and casting. Lou-Lélia Demerliac plays Céline, a withdrawn 11-year-old whose mum (Sylvie Testud) has to work late at a bar to bring in cash, leaving her to cook for her younger siblings and her shiftless, unemployed father (Jacques Bonnaffé), who sexually abuses her. So Céline runs away – though audiences are entitled to some incredulity when they see who this vulnerable girl supposedly wants to run away with. The director speckles her movie with nouvelle vague mannerisms and Godardian flourishes, but it never quite comes alive. Artist and film-maker Douglas Gordon appears as a Scottish truck driver, Peter Ellis. Frankly, acting is not one of his talents, and Peter’s motivation and characterisation are flimsy. Agnès B needs to dig deeper.
