FRANCE
RESTLESS
2009 – 35mm – colourd - 100’
Direction: Laurent Perreau
Screenplay: Laurent Perreau, Juliette Soubrier
Cinematography: Céline Bozon
Editing: Muriel Breton
Set design: Sophie Reynaud-Malouf
Musics: Grégoire Hetzel, Julien Gester, Olivier Gonord
Costumes: Pascaline Chavanne
Cast: Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Eric Caravaca, Marie Kremer, Clément Roussier, Johanna Ter Steege
Producers: Nicolas Mauvernay, Jacques Perrin
Production: Galatée Films, Canal +, Cinécinémas, Canal Overseas, Région Bretagne – CNC, Cofinova 5, Procirep
World Sales: Films Distribution, 34 rue du Louvre, 75001 Paris, France, Tel.:+33 1 53 10 33 99, Fax: +33 1 53 10 33 98, caraux@filmsdistribution.com
SYNOPSIS
Tomboyish teenager Claire sneaks into a dilapidated house through a window. Startled by the sudden appearance of a burly elderly man, she hides under the bed. The door opens… Although Maurice Reverdy, a person as enigmatic as he is eccentric, has in fact taken the young girl into his home, she makes a point of avoiding this distant figure who is actually her grandfather. At 17, Claire is struggling, caught between her passion for swimming and the turmoil of her first romantic stirrings. Everything is a problem for this orphan left to her own devices. Her stormy temperament pushes her into the arms of Thomas, a young employee of the town casino. She is overjoyed when her trainer tells her she has achieved her ardent desire to compete in the swimming championship, but Thomas's sudden disappearance revives her insecurities. For her grandfather, the funeral of a former companion in arms in the “maquis” arouses painful memories. Isolated, abandoned, Maurice and Claire suddenly emerge from their respective turfs; but what common ground can be found between these two generations, simultaneously drawn to, yet rebuffing one another, the one in search of her future, the other tormented by his past?
THE DIRECTOR: LAURENT PERREAU
Laurent Perreau began his career as a filmmaker and editorial director on Canapé, a New York television magazine programme. In 2000 he made his first short film, Quand j'étais photographe, for which he won the Best Script Prize at the Clermont Ferrand Festival. In 2001 he worked as an assistant director and directed the series Le temps d'un tournage for French television. Histoire naturelle (2003), his second short film, won the Jury Grand Prix at the Angers Festival. In 2005 he co-scripted the first feature Le passenger by Eric Caravaca and with Alexis Charrier he co-wrote the script for Le cirque, currently in development with Boa Films. L'insurgée is his first feature film.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
(…) The film observes the rapprochement between these two antagonistic beings, both of them have difficulty dealing with life and expressing their feelings. Two trajectories, two interwoven films, which will soon become just one. Will they find each other the restorative tranquillity they seek? I imagined a film grounded in the body, sensory, physical, organic, to convey what develops and comes undone between the two characters, their inner chaos, their hesitant feelings, their physical experience of this process, the one suffering from longevity, and the other from the feverish eruption of adolescence. (…)
FILMOGRAFIA
2000 Quand j'étais photographe (short)
2003 Histoire naturelle (short)
2009 L'insurgée (Restless)
AWARDS AND FESTIVALS
2009 Locarno: in competition
