Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

A Common Thread (2004)

Director: Éléonore Faucher

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Imperilled or alienated youth has proven a fecund theme in recent European cinema. Director-co-writer Eléonore Faucher eschews the strict minimalism of the Dardenne brothers’ spiritual enquiries or Lynne Ramsey’s visual expressionism in favour of a minor-chord lyrical naturalism for her sensitive debut, the story of an isolated, pregnant 17-year-old in rural Charente. Hiding her bloating tummy from sarcastic supermarket colleagues, aspiring embroideress Claire (the flame-haired Lola Naymark) takes a job in the house of a grieving haute couture designer (Guédiguian regular and wife Ariane Ascaride) and over the needlework a bond slowly forms. Impressive visuals (courtesy of Pierre Cottereau), sound design and effective if modernistically withholding performances combine with Faucher’s mood-sensitive attention to gesture and detail to a kind of therapeutic effect, conjuring an intriguing, non-specific feminised space. Sweet, too, to see how Faucher privileges the (creative) work of hands; a lovingly slow pan over a particularly beautiful sequined design becomes her low-key equivalent of the epiphanic bell-making scene in Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’.

Author: WH 2005-05-16 11:54:45

Time Out London Issue 1813: May 18-25 2005

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


A Common Thread

Cast & crew

Director: Éléonore Faucher

Cast: Marie Félix, Lola Naymark, Ariane Ascaride, M Lescuyer, Thomas Laroppe full cast

Duration: 87 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.