Playlist

Nine Antico’s feature debut is a quintessentially Parisian confection that provides Sara Forestier with her most impressive role to date.

In 2014 the French cartoonist Nine Antico wrote and directed a short film entitled Tonite. Now she follows that up with her first feature, Playlist, which is set in Paris. Its screenplay is one on which she collaborated with Marc Syrigas and it does have a male voice over provided by Bertrand Belin, but this is a film which looks at life from a decidedly female perspective. The central figure is Sophie played by Sara Forestier, a young woman still finding her way in life. Although she has for a year been involved with a boyfriend, Jean (Pierre Lottin), once he makes her pregnant it becomes all too apparent that he does not want to settle down with her and this situation leads her to opt for an abortion. Work-wise she is a waitress who readily gives up that job to become an employee of Jean-Luc (Grégoire Colin), a publisher of graphic novels. She herself draws and secretly has hopes that Jean-Luc might become interested in her work. Nevertheless, despite having an innate talent, she is at twenty-six already too old to be eligible for studies that would develop her skills in this respect.

At the film’s outset our narrator has expressed the view that when growing up youngsters are confident that they will be able to fulfil their dreams but that subsequently they come to recognise how problematic life really is. Sophie is presented as an example of somebody who illustrates this: in her twenties she is casting around uneasily for a man who will be her true soulmate and trying to find a way to turn her drawing skills into a career, but success is elusive on both counts. Similarly, her best friend, Julia (Laetitia Dosch), who has acting ambitions, is struggling to get a good film role and Sophie’s room-mate, Louise (Inas Chanti), a legal intern, is also facing problems.

Oddly but not unattractively, this contemporary tale is shot in black and white. Playlist is a work with a tone that is clearly sympathetic to the issues faced by its central characters but which nevertheless avoids the deeper drama that these themes might suggest. Instead it seeks to be an attractive entertainment, one in which humour definitely plays a part and in which a number of songs are heard in passing on the soundtrack, not least Daniel Johnston’s ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’ which features twice. The film’s greatest asset is undoubtedly Sara Forestier who perfectly captures Sophie’s vulnerable naivety. But, while audiences will readily empathise with Sophie, the film emerges as distinctly episodic and fails to find and develop a sufficiently precise central focus. An opportunity for this arises when the narrator asks which of the following is the braver action: to persevere in your course when failure seems likely or to recognise the need to make a change. Without necessarily becoming any heavier in tone, a closer investigation of this question would have added much to a film that already shows us women who are young and yet old enough to be losing real hope of finding love and attaining fulfilling work. As it stands, while it is true that Playlist is quintessentially French and gains much from the presence of Sara Forestier, it is a film that leaves a much slighter impression than it might have done.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Sara Forestier, Laetitia Dosch, Pierre Lottin, Andranic Manet, Inas Chanti, Grégoire Colin, Lescop, Jackie Berroyer, Killoffer, Hervé Lacroix, Laura Luna, and Bertrand Belin as narrator.

Dir Nine Antico, Pro Thomas Verhaeghe and Mathieu Verhaeghe, Screenplay Nine Antico with Marc Syrigas, Ph Julie Conte, Set Dec Léa Adriansen, Ed Carole Le Page, Costumes Ariane Daurat.

Atelier de Production/Playtime/SG Image 2018/Ciné+-Curzon.
86 mins. France. 2021. Rel: 22 October 2021. No Cert.