35 Shots of Rum

A film set on a housing estate outside Paris. Lionel drives a suburban train. He has worked the same line for years. His daughter Joséphine is at university. The two live together. Her mother died years ago. She was German. From there the film proceeds through daily life. Coming home in the evening. Cooking. A rice cooker. There is little speech. The narrative builds the closeness between them through movement rather than words. There are others in the building. Gabrielle drives a taxi. She loves Lionel and he does not see it. Noé is upstairs. A young man; he wants to sell the flat he inherited from his father and cannot. There is something between him and Joséphine. The narrative never announces it. There is another line. Lionel's colleague is retiring. The man does not know what to do. His whole life was that train. The retirement party begins as a celebration and ends as a mourning. What the narrative is interested in is not family but letting go: its idea is that the father knows he has to let his daughter go and never talks about it. One night there is a breakdown. Four people take shelter in a bar. The bar is closing. But the owner lets them in. Music plays. From there the scene turns. Four people dance and each dance says something. That section is the film's centre and is almost without speech. The drink in the title is a tradition. Thirty-five glasses of rum are drunk only once, and when they are drunk becomes clear at the end. Agnès Godard shot it. The music is by Tindersticks. Claire Denis said she wrote it starting from her own grandfather. The structure is close to a Japanese film; Ozu's stories of fathers and daughters are invoked and the director confirmed it. Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogué and Grégoire Colin are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow, quiet French cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the narrative is almost entirely daily detail and no line is openly tied off.