The Path of Excellence

Sophie works on her family's pig farm. She is in her last year at school and the best in her class at mathematics. Her teacher shows her a road: a preparatory class and then the entrance to an engineering school. Sophie leaves home. At the new school everyone is from the city and prepared; their families already know this road. Sophie falls behind. She works, she does not sleep, and still cannot keep up. Her family talk about their own troubles on the telephone and the farm is in difficulty. The examination approaches. What stands in Sophie's way is not only mathematics. Frédéric Mermoud directs. Suzanne Jouannet plays Sophie; Marie Colomb, Cyril Metzger and Marilyne Canto are in the cast. It is a French and Swiss co-production. The film had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on 3 August 2023. The matter it treats is the cost of moving up; the film does not build success as a question of talent. The narrative takes the French preparatory class system as a direct subject; the competition is institutional and merciless. The narrative does not show the family as an obstacle; they support their daughter and it is still not enough. Suzanne Jouannet carries the character by saying little. The film keeps the farm scenes short, but the distance between the two worlds is felt throughout. The ending gives no scene of triumph. Its limit is structure; the narrative runs to type, the secondary characters are thin, and the pace flat. Who it is for: viewers who like French social drama and narratives set in schools. Who it is not for: it is conventional, slow, and the ending unresolved.