Brief Encounter

The plot behind the film Mademoiselle is fairly standard, but it’s this film’s execution of a fairly familiar story that’s so excellent. Lovers of French film should enjoy Sandrine Bonnaire’s wonderful performance, and the plot’s refreshing, surprising moments.

Mademoiselle, a frame story from director Philippe Lioret, is the tale of Claire (Sandrine Bonnaire) a regional pharmaceutical saleswoman who attends a meeting far from home. Extremely attractive, she could chose to philander with her fellow sales reps, but married with two children, she seems committed to her sales goals and the company she works for.

While attending the sales meeting, she meets Pierre Cassini (Jacques Gamblin), Alice (Isabelle Candelier) and Karim (Zinedine Soualem) who are collectively a group of traveling improvisations actors employed for special events. Known as “The Unpredictables,” they typically infiltrate social occasions, and they assume improvised roles concocted as a result of the type of feedback from the crowd they mingle with. Claire is impressed by the trio’s skills, and circumstances throw them together. Placed in a situation in which they must improvise, Claire and Pierre find themselves improvising a relationship, and the relationship seems so natural it continues into the night.

Mademoiselle is listed as a romantic comedy. Well I’d sort-of agree with the romance part, but scratch the comedy. Claire is luminous as the responsible, ordered saleswoman who has a fling with a spontaneous, creative man who’s her opposite in so many ways. One senses that their relationship would not survive the day-to-day demands of real life, but in the narrow confines of 36 hours, both Claire and Pierre emerge changed by their experience. In French with subtitles.