This autobiographical work from French director Diane Kurys serves as a prequel to PEPPERMINT SODA, her superb 1977 feature debut.
The film opens during the German occupation of France. Lena (Isabelle Huppert), a young Russian Jew, escapes from a prison camp by marrying a stranger, Michel (Guy Marchand). Meanwhile, in Paris, art student Madeleine (Miou-Miou) must start life anew when her husband is brutally gunned down before
her. The scene then shifts to Lyons, 1952, for a chance meeting between these two women. Lena is still wed to Michel and is the mother of two children, while Madeleine has remarried. They come to realize that they can only find support from each other and not from their boorish husbands.
A resounding art-house success in the US and Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, ENTRE NOUS is an excellent examination of the bond of friendship. Like very few films before it, ENTRE NOUS focuses--with subtle but distinct lesbian undertones--on a female friendship instead of the usual male
"buddy" formula. Based in part on the experiences of the director's own mother, this fictionalized account is one of great emotional truth. The relationships between Lena and Madeleine and between the women and their respective families are written, directed, and acted with a touch usually seen
only in the films of Renoir, Pagnol or Truffaut. The picture's chief weakness is its sometimes uninvolving episodic structure, beginning with the rocky 1940s prologue that opens the movie. Still, ENTRE NOUS is intelligent, adult cinema. leave a comment
