Un week-end sur deux

This premier effort from a beacon French actress, Nicole Garcia already shows where her author chose to go as regards her set of themes: family and problems that can reign in it. See also "le Fils Préféré" (1994) and especially the unsettling "l'Adversaire" (2002) with a mind-boggling Daniel Auteuil.

So, divorce and alternating custody of the children were to be privileged and the first originality of this "Week-End Sur Deux" is that here, it's a woman rather than a man who breaks the law to protract her stay with her children. Camille (Nathalie Baye) is an actress who devoted little time to her conjugal life with her husband Adrian (Miki Manojlovic) and so led to her separation with him and her children. When one week-end, she must go to Vichy for a new role, she has no other choice than to take her children with her. After a grievous telephone conversation during which her husband calls her an irresponsible, she cracks up and absconds with her children in a rented car towards Spain to attend a meteorite fall.

This rash impulse and Camille's headstrong attitude are an attempt from her to reconquer love and trust from her children, especially Antoine who has a hard time of the divorce. So, her mother begins to show interest in his likings, notably astronomy. The vivid portrait Nicole Garcia leaves of Camille underpins this unceremonious turn of events and is the backbone of the film. Garcia's edgy style serves the escape of a reckless mother who obey to her desires and who nearly loses her markers. See the sequence in the hotel when she thinks she has lost her bag. With this perspective, moments of suspense with the police, the customs or the rented cars agency subside to give way to a mercurial mother who wants to prove she can listen to her children's plight.

How will it end? Will her children and especially Antoine end up accepting her? And how will Adrian react? The answers are in this sensitive film.