All is Forgiven
Contemporary Cinema
•
1h 39m
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 98 mins | 2007
Mia Hansen-Løve was only twenty-five when she directed one of the most striking and auspicious first features in 21st century French cinema, which finds the brisk economy of expression, nuanced characterization, and formal daring of her future films (Father of My Children, Eden, Things to Come) firmly in place. In Vienna, 1995, we meet writer and covert heroin addict Victor (Paul Blain); his partner, Annette (Marie-Christine Friedrich); and their young daughter, Pamela (Victoire Rousseau). After capturing this family unit on the verge of crisis in cutting, incisive scenes that track the signs of domestic and personal breakdown as they surface in everyday life, Hansen-Løve audaciously leaps across the span of eleven years with a single title card, shifting the film’s focus to a now-adolescent Pamela (Constance Rousseau), living in Paris, as she attempts to sift through the wreckage of her parents’ relationship and mend fences with her long-absent father. With her feature debut Hansen-Løve has already found her great subject: the passage of time and how it moves differently for different people, here at work in a strikingly original, deeply empathetic family drama that sidesteps all clichéd sentimentality on the way to achieving quietly devastating results.
Up Next in Contemporary Cinema
-
Bergman Island
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 112 mins | 2021
Vicky Krieps shines in Mia Hansen-Løve’s wry and playful portrait of a woman, mother, and frustrated artist. Starring opposite Tim Roth, the pair play married filmmakers who travel for a writing retreat to the secluded Swedish island of Fårö—a place s... -
Goodbye First Love
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 110 mins | 2011
As in her first two features, Mia Hansen-Løve’s third reckons with the psychic fallout of a young woman abandoned by a man she loves—here, not a father but a lover. Camille, 15 (a radiant Lola Créton), is blindsided when her boyfriend, 19-year-old Sul... -
Mutual Appreciation
Directed by Andrew Bujalski | 109 mins | 2005
Bujalski’s second feature stars Bishop Allen vocalist Justin Rice as a Boston transplant musician freshly arrived in New York, looking for new bandmates while drifting between a noncommittal affair with a radio station DJ (Seung-Min Lee), boozy sessio...
