Cannes 2023’s longest standing ovation is a pedestal with nothing to lose at Virgin Air!

Applause rains from the opening credits. It’s a game in Cannes to linger as long as possible after a film is shown, especially in the presence of its stars, but there we feel it, we know, it’s not overdone. Weeping, the audience in Debussy’s room passionately witness the chorus, which presents their mixed feelings: full sympathy, restrained anger, partial liberation, deeply evoking a very modern form of helplessness. This is evidenced by another moment of the film, where the applause was heard, as if in spite of itself, during an incorrigible whim. as a common revenge.

It’s irreversible, that’s right. How to contain her helpless rage once again in the face of this story of a mother whose child was taken away by social services in a family accident in which she was not present and which defies administrative and legal procedures. A system that, also because it lacks time and means, generalizes a specific case and sometimes makes mistakes for fear of missing a tragedy.

Everything is fine, we bought a frit!

Gradually losing ground to the rigors of the machine that puts her mother in a box that is a bit caricatured, the heroine falls. Once again in her career, under the director’s watchful eye, Virgin Efira offers a nuanced, complex feminine score, a fresh take on the mother figure, not so guilty and not so perfect. But the definition of which is contagious.

Of course, an overworked and borderline mother, but one who has an undeniable love for her children, knows how to be there for them in important moments, even if social services have sad evidence to the contrary.

A man full of imperfections, played to perfection on all fronts by the actor, all loving and passionate that he is in front of his two sons, played by the young and hot Alexis Tonette and the most calm and metamorphosed Félix Lefebvre, contained all the anxiety. :

“The sensitivity of the role, the way he looks, the way he communicates, I was captivated. He needs help and never puts his problems on the table, but works inside him. I wanted him for all these reasons. Investing myself physically (For the editor’s note of the role, the actor gained 20 kg) for better interpretation”, The actor told us when we met.

The almost young teenager raised by this mother is the one who raises him within the maternal and filial trajectory, which raises the crucial question: until she allows her youngest child to recover, at what point should she accept him. break up with the boss? Which separation is legitimate or not? Is it clear, natural?

“There is something couple in the mother-daughter relationship, in their functioning. He asks a lot of responsibility from him. This is a single family, working at night, she needs and admires him. Love is not about staying together, but in this case, about being left without it.”Virgin Efira answers.

I have the right to be angry, that’s all I have left!

Anger and powerlessness were at the heart of the Cannes cinema, but let’s be clear: Delphine Delaug’s aim is not to judge, to criticize a harmful system, but simply to highlight its possible failures:

“My character comes face-to-face with someone who doesn’t want to listen. She’s told, ‘She’ll be perfectly fine without you, she’ll be green.'” Everything is not perfect, the schedule is not kept, but love is swirling and they tell him that it is not enough…

Are they completely wrong? Yes, love is the basic rule, but if that’s all and you don’t know where your parents are, it can get complicated. Therefore it is difficult to define and there are many orders and especially in these periods”. Virgin Efira, who prides herself on this intimate and political perspective, elaborates.

And Felix Lefebvre adds:

“A film outstanding in its writing and telling an authentic story does not try to tell the system, the global reality of the mother. It tells us a story. We all recognize ourselves in moments when we no longer get out of it and it goes beyond everything, there is no lesson and some moral recovery. There is no Manichaeism here is”.

There really aren’t any real bad guys and no real good guys in this first nugget movie, where everyone does what they can and makes it to the end, an extraordinary ending that we’ll let you discover. Go ahead, you have nothing to lose. And you have everything to gain.

Discover a very powerful excerpt from this film Un Certain Regard that you should not miss: