FLASHP01NT

Almost twenty years later Benoît Jacquot attempts to replicate the stop-go working-class intimacy of La Fille seule (1995), in Les Adieux à la reine (2012), and basically succeeds. The film is strangely similar to Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), but with zero humor. Both directors must be unadmitted (or unconscious) acolytes of Kieslowski's docu-observational look, since both directors fail at storytelling but excel at framing and ambiance, resulting in movies that are much less entertaining but impossible to forget.

Anne of Windy Poplars (1940): Reminiscent of (but made before) Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). A sweet girl (in this case, young woman) defeats petty community tensions with her unyielding amiability. There's even a tall building on fire at night.

It's interesting to watch a bad director struggle to deal with a photogenic actor, as if they were determined to make a bad film but the actor's pretty face kept getting in the way. Poplars could have been an American family classic, if it had been directed by Curtiz or Kazan.