It all starts with a beat of blue light. A gleam that caresses the cheeks of Camille (Pili Groyne), 16, four months pregnant and tossed about in a fire truck while she has just swallowed medication to try to have an abortion. This first scene serves as a prelude to the placement of the young woman, against her will and that of her mother, in a maternal center. And so, the director interferes in the daily life of the women populating this structure which helps single mothers or mothers in difficulty. However, if the idea of approaching the subject of those who have long been called “unmarried mothers” through the prism of maternal centers suggests scenes of a certain violence – between their emotional distress and their fragility financial – the strength of Julie Lerat-Gersant’s story lies in the gentle gaze her camera casts on them.
Touching naivety
An approach that manages to express all at once the anger, the fear, the pain and the tenderness that drive them, avoiding the trap of caricature and without shedding tears. Thus, the story unfolds according to Camille’s emotions and the relationships she forms with the women in the centre. And the scenes of daily life that pepper the speech mingle with the escapades of the teenager. Some passages seem a bit expected – Camille paints her nails with a black marker, travels at full speed and on rollerblades the strikes of Caen and Cherbourg, and dreams of a carelessness soon to fly away while dancing in the rain – which nevertheless color the story with touching naivety. Likewise, the close-ups embrace the gaze of the characters to the point of blending into their skin, and give the film a carnal dimension.
Complex relationship
One could deplore the lack of common thread, because the story flutters from one subject to another, lingering in turn on the tears of a child that a woman left alone to go dancing, and on the relationship complex that Camille maintains with her own mother. We could also regret the speed with which the film evacuates the treatment of certain characters, and in particular that of Nadine (Romane Bohringer), Camille’s referent – and which nevertheless allows us to sketch, in the background, a criticism of social assistance to childhood, necrotic by the lack of manpower to the administrative inertia which hampers decision-making.