Milla

Valérie Massadian’s second feature after NANA is again about a young woman coming to understand the world, one step at a time, one day at a time. But unlike the four-year-old Nana, MILLA’s eponymous protagonist – 17, but older than her years – has already graduated from the middle school of life. She learns the lessons of adulthood, and that takes time. Completely bereft of sentimentality, Massadian’s expansive portrait takes place at a port town in Northern France, where Milla and her boyfriend Leo set up in an empty house that is gradually transformed into a home, two lovers seemingly alone in a cruel world represented by the crashing waves and constant sounds of the sea. Life itself (and, indeed, nature) intervenes after Leo takes a job on a fishing boat, and Milla, suddenly with child – Massadian occasionally interrupts her determined naturalism with both narrative ellipses and moments of brazen artificiality – must persevere. (Mark Peranson)

In the presence of Valérie Massadian.