Perth Voice Interactive

ALLIANCE Française will celebrate International Women’s Day with a special screening of This Life of Mine on Saturday (March 8).

A witty and poignant portrait of a woman navigating a mid-life crisis, the film was directed by the late Sophie Fillières and won Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Once an attractive, devoted mother and partner, Barbie (Agnès Jaoui) faces newfound challenges as she turns 55.

Her cathartic journey descends into darkness and absurdity as she grapples with her identity and challenging relationships.

A celebration of female resilience, reinvention and strength, it was the final film by acclaimed French director Sophie Fillières, who died in July 2023 shortly after shooting was completed.

While in hospital on her death bed, she wrote instructions on how she wanted the film to be edited and completed.

Fillières wrote the film’s screenplay five years earlier. She insisted the protagonist Barbie was not autobiographical, but Jaoui said she often felt like she was portraying Fillières in the movie.

During the production, she was asked to wear the director’s clothes and rings, and the role of the therapist was played by Fillières’s real-life psychologist of 30 years.

Another movie celebrating International Women’s Day, Niki is a bold exploration of the iconoclastic French artist Niki de Saint-Phalle.

The film follows Niki (Charlotte Le Bon) and her husband Harry (John Robinson) as they leave America for Paris in 1952, fleeing a country in the throes of McCarthyism.

Overwhelmed by motherhood and working as a model and actress, Niki hopes her bohemian life is enough to fulfil her – or silence the haunting episodes from her childhood. 

It’s an impressive debut by director Céline Sallette, who deftly explores how Niki overcomes archaic attitudes towards women to became an uncompromising sculptor, painter, author and filmmaker.

This Life of Mine and Niki are showing at Luna Leederville and Luna on SX as part of the Alliance Française French Film Festival, which runs from March 13 to April 16.

For more details and full listings see www.affrenchfilmfestival.org.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK