A Single Girl

Benoît Jacquot's 1995 film covers exactly ninety minutes in ninety minutes: the events run in real time. That morning Valérie tells her boyfriend in a café that she is pregnant, and the same day she starts a job at a four-star hotel. From then on the film does not leave her; the camera is behind her along corridors, through room service, waiting for lifts. The real-time structure makes you feel not the decision itself but the weight of the span in which it has to be made; Valérie gets no separate time to think, because life is going on simultaneously. Virginie Ledoyen was nineteen and the role opened her career, bringing a César nomination. It is a good example of the minimal strand in nineties French cinema. Who it's for: viewers who like films built on a formal restriction and narratives carried by one character. Who it's not for: anyone wanting plot and a dramatic turning point; the film is one working day.