Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 319: Fri Nov 15

A Single Girl (Jacquot, 1995): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm


This 35mm presentation, which is also being screened on November 26this part of the ‘Maurice Pialat and the New French Realism’ season. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Just as she's about to start a job with room service at a luxury hotel in Paris, a young woman (Virginie Ledoyen) tells her boyfriend that she's pregnant and wants to keep their child. They quarrel but arrange to meet an hour later; the film then follows her at work for that hour in real time. This segment of Benoit Jacquot's compelling 1995 feature, written with Jerome Beaujour, is a stunning demonstration of moral and existential suspense in relation to duration, much like Agnes Varda's 1961 Cleo From 5 to 7. Later the excitement dissipates somewhat, and when the film abandons real time to make room for an epilogue it becomes ordinary. But until then it's an essential piece of filmmaking—not simply as a stylistic exercise, but as a fascinating look at a hotel in operation.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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