As Gentille opens, Fontaine Leglou is walking down a Paris street, and stops to confront a man whom she suspects is following her. She tells him he looks normal, but she's sorry, she doesn't have time to have coffee with him. When he convincingly protests that he was not following her, she apologizes and asks him to have coffee. Fontaine would seem to have a relatively good life. She works as an anesthetist at a fancy mental hospital, and she's got a live-in Nobel Prize-winning arctic scientist boyfriend, Michel, who seems to love her. But there's clearly something nagging at her. She walks around in a perpetually distracted state, and frequently mistakes other peoples' identities and their intentions. When Michel proposes to her, she needs some time to digest it before she responds.
Acting
Emmanuelle Devos weaponizes hesitation.
Writing
Dialogue that stumbles like actual human speech.
Direction
Sophie Fillières finds poetry in social dysfunction.
Director
Sophie Fillières
Emmanuelle Devos
Fontaine Leglou
Lambert Wilson
Philipe
Michael Lonsdale
Jean
Bulle Ogier
Angèle
Julie-Anne Roth
Cléia
Nicolas Briançon
Jean-Jacques
Michel Vuillermoz
Le docteur Gudarzi
Magali Woch
Sonia
Gilles Cohen
Hugues
Éric Elmosnino
Marco, le destin
Nicolas Vaude
le type de la cafétéria
Bruno Todeschini
Michel Strogoff
Miglen Mirtchev
Le caricaturiste
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a wave of 2000s French 'comédie de mœurs' that rejected Hollywood pacing for awkward authenticity.
Lambert Wilson's character Philipe was reportedly expanded after test audiences responded to his chemistry with Devos.
FR
