THE STORY – Shana faces life’s daily struggles with boundless energy and the support of her group of friends. When her grandmother passes away, she inherits a ring meant to protect against the evil eye. Shana could certainly use this boost. Especially since, with her toxic partner’s release from prison, her troubles are piling up.
THE CAST – Eva Huault, Noémie Lvovsky, Inès Gherib, Anaïs Monah, Bettina De Van, Geneviève Krief & Sékouba Doucouré
THE TEAM – Lila Pinell (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 80 Minutes
We all have that one person in our lives who can’t seem to help making the worst, most self-destructive choices. It’s rarely intentional, but some people’s internal compasses consistently point them down the path of most resistance. Some are seemingly born to suffer and are addicted to drama, as if to them a calm and quiet life is an unfulfilled one. Cinema is filled with such characters who repeatedly make the wrong decisions. After all, this makes for an excellent source of perpetual drama. But these types of stories can be tough to watch, with frustration guaranteed from opening to closing credits. “Shana” is one of these films. Centered around a difficult but pitiable protagonist, director Lila Pinell’s film is completely anchored by Eva Huault’s fantastic performance as the volatile main character.
The titular Shana (Huault) is a young woman living in Paris. Despite having an unglamorous but steady job at a quick service restaurant, her main transactional focus is working as a drug dealer in place of her boyfriend Moïse (Sékouba Doucouré), who’s currently in jail. Even though he’s as unable to physically be with Shana (and despite her insistence that she’s not being manipulated by him), Moïse is able to fully control Shana over the phone, using both threats and saccharine pleas to get her to continue his black market dealings as his proxy. Every person in Shana’s life tries to make her see that he’s bad news, but Shana (like most twentysomethings) strongly believes that she knows best.
“Shana” doesn’t so much follow a typical plot. Instead, it trails behind Shana as she hangs out with friends and fulfills family obligations, with the majority of these scenes ending in a fight. Shana speaks her mind and is extremely quick to anger. As one family member puts it, she goes from “zero to 10 in five seconds.” Shana is brittle and abrasive, and no matter the level of severity – be it a dispute over drug money or a fight about a board game – she’ll scream until she gets her way or, more likely, storms out. In the wrong hands, it would be easy for her to be unwatchable and off-putting. But luckily, Huault is fully committed to portraying all of Shana’s flaws and positive traits, even if the latter seems much harder to find. Huault’s Shana is impassioned but clearly hurting, and this truth comes to a head during a powerful confrontation in public with her mother which dredges up her traumatic childhood. Of course, nearly everyone in the world has some sort of painful history, but Shana’s is especially harrowing and it’s easy to see how and why she became the person we see her to be. That doesn’t excuse some of her more selfish and anti-social behaviors and decisions, but plenty of unseemly people with sympathetic personal stories exist in our real world. To ignore them for the sake of comfort isn’t helpful for anyone.
Lila Pinell deliberately constructs the film, using flashy-but-unobtrusive editing choices (there are some truly stunning dissolves, especially during one stressfully-hallucinogenic scene) and well-composed frames to give the story an elevated artistry. She’s particularly fascinated by her character’s hands, and even more specifically, Shana’s long nails, with the camera lingering on her manicure as she taps them on a hard surface. This strangely complements the musical choices, which feature sparse percussion that calls to mind the musical selections that Stanley Kubrick used in his later films like “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” The story is undeniably a stressful one, but Pinell balances out the high intensity plot mechanics with a general energy that can almost bizarrely be described as pleasant. Outdoor scenes are shot with an emphasis on the natural sunlight, which acts as a calming visual presence. It’s as if Shana is blind to the obvious beauty of the world around her, predisposed to focus on the negative thanks to her learned experiences.
Shana has a habit of telling people with whom she finds herself verbally sparring “I could care less” and “I could give a shit.” It’s clear what she means to say, but her common grammatical errors actually betray her true feelings. She does care, and deeply, at that. But she’s been hardened by experience, both the ones she put herself through and the ones that were thrust upon her, and the film subtly shows how her difficult past has informed and affected her tumultuous present. “Shana” isn’t an easy watch, and the unending dramas are numbingly repetitive, but it’s truthful, and more art could serve to be as honest as this film.
