Not Here to Be Loved

Jean-Claude Delsart is a bailiff of fifty. His job is going into people's homes and seizing their belongings. His wife left years ago, he is cold with his son, and his father is in a care home where the two of them cannot talk. One day he notices there is a tango class in the building opposite his office and goes in. There he meets Françoise, who is about to be married. Stéphane Brizé's film uses dance not as a metaphor but directly as a form of contact: two people coming close without speaking. Patrick Chesnais plays the part with almost no change of expression, and all the feeling of the film sits in that silence. Anne Consigny plays Françoise. The telling does not hurry; it shows step by step a man starting to want something again.