Riviera

Set in Nice and its lusciously photographed environs, this somewhat undernourished drama centres on the relationship of single mother Miou-Miou, who works as hotel maid, and her go-go-dancer daughter Giocante, whose taste in men hardly meets with mum’s approval. A study of emotional pain, misplaced kindness, familial bonds and, perhaps, history’s capacity to repeat itself, the film is ambitious but often irritatingly obscure thanks to its preoccupation with visual style. Giocante, as insistently ‘hot’ as she was made to appear in ‘Lila Says’, is again a ludicrous stereotype of unbridled adolescent sexuality doomed, it seems, to punishment for her ‘sins’.