The Mystery of Alexina

Set in mid-19th century provincial France, this tells of a young woman who arrives to teach at a girls' boarding school and falls in love with a colleague, only to discover to her own astonishment that she is in fact a man. It's excellently performed and shot, and Féret teases out the ironies of Alexina's predicament, denied the right to love either as woman or man, with sure, steady clarity. Finally, however, it never entirely escapes a certain dullness, while its portrait of oppression born of ignorance and fear is unduly one-dimensional. Fascinating, nevertheless, as a sensitive account of an extraordinary story based in historical fact.