THE STORY – Annie Ernaux is invited to sign her latest book in the city of her childhood, Rouen. As she travels there, she is overcome with vertigo and is plunged back into her first night with a man. A night whose shockwave spread violently through her body and across the rest of her life…
THE CAST – Esther Archambault, Maïwène Barthélémy, Tess Barthélémy, Sephora Pondi, Valérie Dréville & Victor Bonnel
THE TEAM – Judith Godrèche (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 117 Minutes
French actor and filmmaker Judith Godrèche (“The Man in the Iron Mask”) has been in the industry for decades, known for her roles in films such as “The Man in the Iron Mask” (1998) and “The Spanish Apartment” (2002). She also directed the moving and memorable short, “Moi Aussi” (Me Too), which features hundreds of real-life survivors of sexual assault and played at the 2024 opening of the Cannes Un Certain Regard section. This short by the actor-turned-director would precede another moving project tackling similar themes and messaging. 30 years after her alleged attack by the infamous Harvey Weinstein at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Godrèche returns to the Croisette with her reflective and powerful second feature: “A Girl’s Story” (Memoire De Fille).
Adapted from the Nobel Prize-winning memoir of the same name by Annie Ernaux, France’s inspirational and symbolic face of the #MeToo movement presents a bold and stirring coming-of-age drama that translates Ernaux’s words to screen and features an impressive performance by Tess Barthélemy (of Godrèche’s Moi Aussi). “A Girl’s Story” follows teenager Annie (Barthélemy) during a summer in the late 50s, who experiences sexual violence for the first time in her life, and illustrates how this ultimately shapes her worldview, as well as how she navigates relationships and society as a whole throughout adolescence and adulthood.
Annie is a green and naive teen when she arrives at her first summer camp as a counselor. Raised by Catholicism and guileless as they come, she doesn’t quite fit in with the other girls, who consider her a prude. However, her suggested virtue catches the eye of head counselor H (Victor Bonnel), who repeatedly takes advantage of her innocence and curiosity throughout camp. Annie emerges changed and broken, at odds with herself as she juggles feelings of confidence and devastation – her emotions and feelings towards her often violent experience clashing with one another. Throughout “A Girl’s Story,” Annie singlehandedly represents the dichotomy of being a woman navigating society. From being hypersexualized and blamed from a young age for embracing or simply existing in one’s body to being considered a prudish shrew if abstaining from sexuality altogether, there is and never has been any way to win in this paradox.
Tess Barthélemy carries “A Girl’s Story” as a lead with seemingly practiced ease, despite being a newcomer to the screen. Her portrayal of Annie takes her audience on a raw and tangible journey that is unnerving to watch. Through Barthélemy’s performance, she transforms Annie from a semi-nerdy, good-natured schoolgirl into a wild and slightly delusional shape of herself – something spurring directly from her traumatic sexual experiences, even if she herself doesn’t recognize them as such in society’s eyes. Annie’s mental decline and confusion in processing her own unnoticed trauma is a hard watch and serves as a stark reminder that her scenario has been a sickeningly common one for a millennium.
Cinematographer Joachim Philippe excels at enhancing emotion throughout “A Girl’s Story” by using close-ups and tight framing on Barthélemy’s Annie to articulate her point of view more accurately. From neon lighting to motion-blurred slow motion shots, the audience is positioned right along with her as she moves through – and tries to make sense of – the world and how it relates to her transformed perspective. Philippe’s camera captures both moments of bliss as well as Annie’s harrowing sexual experiences. Still, she is never positioned in a way that makes her an object to either pity or salivate over. Rather, “A Girl’s Story” is shot in a way that teeters the line between feeling intimate yet respectful in quite an impressive manner. Faux Amis’ sweeping and marvelous score is a blessed addition, complementing Godrèche’s powerful script with satisfaction, but not without sneaking in a few cheeky needle drops.
Sitting at a semi-conservative 117 minutes, “A Girl’s Story” wouldn’t need any cutting if it weren’t for a few cliches and a small number of loose ends that it never ties up, or simply forgets about. There’s the introduction of a promising mentorship figure into Annie’s life in the form of a nurse (Saint Omer’s Guslagie Malanda), only to fade her out of the script with no explanation as sudden as she entered. Not to mention the redhead queer-implied Claudine (Maïwène Barthélémy), whom Annie becomes fast friends with, and whose promising significance is dashed on the rocks when it becomes obvious that perhaps the editor preferred her as a background character.
Hauntingly uneasy yet culturally significant, “A Girl’s Story” challenges societal norms that have been largely stagnant and unmoving for centuries. Between Barthélemy’s captivating performance as Annie and Godrèche’s precise direction and passionate adapted screenplay, the film is able to paint a disturbing depiction of the extent to which violence against women has been normalized. “A Girl’s Story” is elevated by fantastic performances and stellar technicals, and is destined to be a film that facilitates important conversations and alters ignorant perspectives. In adapting Ernaux’s memoir, the film becomes more than a fictional narrative. It’s a humbling reminder that although the courageous author (born in 1940) has witnessed extraordinary progress regarding feminism throughout her lifetime, the work remains unfinished.
