Synopsis
Normandy, 1819. Jeanne is a young woman full of childish dreams and innocence when she returns home after finishing her schooling in a convent. She marries a local Viscount, Julien de Lamare, who soon reveals himself to be a miserly and unfaithful man. Little by little Jeanne’s illusions are stripped away.
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Cast
- Judith ChemlaJeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds
- Jean-Pierre DarroussinLe baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds
- Swann ArlaudJulien de Lamare
- Yolande MoreauLa baronne Adélaïde Le Perthuis des Vauds
- Nina MeurisseRosalie
- Clotilde HesmeGilberte de Fourville
- Alain BeigelGeorges de Fourville
- Olivier PerrierL'abbé Picot
- Finnegan OldfieldPaul de Lamare
Recommendations
- 90
The New York Times
Its images and scenes are suffused by an intensity that seems almost to be a quality of the light and air as they play across Ms. Chemla’s watchful, sometimes inscrutable features. - 90
The Hollywood Reporter
The 31-year-old Chemla (Camille Rewinds) is a revelation in the title role and utterly mesmerizing and credible whether she’s playing Jeanne at 20 or at 47. - 90
Variety
A Woman’s Life has the kind of majesty found not in the grand gesture but the modest detail, the kind that accumulates resonance with each seemingly minor event until the picture of a character becomes as complete as a painting by Ingres. Or a story by Maupassant. - 90
Village Voice
The ending is a joy and a heartbreaker, but what lingers from this revelatory life is that compact world Jeanne inhabits, and how each tragedy, each happiness, and each everyday gesture together accrete into the woman we discover again and again. - 70
Screen Daily
Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead. - 67
Christian Science Monitor
Chemla has an expressive face and she’s photographed lovingly, in a way that would probably have caught the attentions of the great French Impressionists, but ultimately she is more of a sculptural presence than a fully fleshed-out protagonist. - 63
Slant Magazine
The choice of low-grade, handheld digital images further reduces the film to the clichés of revisionist literary filmmaking. - 60
CineVue
A Woman's Life is a modest chamber piece, a series of sketches revealing a life of quiet desperation, which eschews melodrama and, for the most part, platitudes but exhibits great tenderness and sensitivity.
