Grand Expectations

Summer 2019. Madeleine has finished at Sciences Po and is preparing for the oral examinations of the national administration school. She goes to Corsica with her partner Antoine; they will study at the family house. Madeleine comes from a working family and Antoine from a wealthy one. An argument starts on the road. A man attacks them and it escalates; in the end one person is dead and there are two witnesses. The two agree: they will tell nobody. They go back to Paris. Madeleine goes on with her career and starts working for a member of parliament. But the matter is not over. Sylvain Desclous directs. Rebecca Marder plays Madeleine and Benjamin Lavernhe plays Antoine; Emmanuelle Bercot and Marc Barbé are in the cast. It is a French production. The matter it treats is class; Madeleine's wish to rise and where she comes from are in constant conflict inside the narrative. The narrative uses the crime film as ground and its real subject is how politics works. The film shows directly the institutions where the French governing class is trained. Rebecca Marder does not play the character for sympathy; Madeleine is ambitious and calculating. The narrative offers no moral judgement and punishes nobody at the end. It reverses the balance of power between its two characters. Its limit is structure; the narrative splits into two halves and the tension drops in the second. Who it is for: viewers who like French political drama and narratives of class. Who it is not for: it is cold, distant, and the ending uncomfortable.