La consolation

The middle-aged titular heroine (Masiero) of this bare-bones, Dardenne-esque debut has certainly fallen on hard times: Living between her car and a storage shed, working a part-time job as a hotel chambermaid, and trying against all odds to obtain public housing, Louise scrapes by on a day-to-day subsistence that’s only a few Euros away from skid row.

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At Christmas, Nathalie is haunted by an ominous premonition about Alice, adopted 14 years earlier. While her husband and in-laws are present, a closed-door situation develops in which her daughter's behavior changes abruptly.

Tahar is just over twenty years old, with a youthful face and a tender voice. But the carelessness of student life is not for him. Not for him, whose mother raised 10 children alone, whose family is far away, in Belfort, while he studies in Montpellier. For him, the world is not so much huge and full of dangers as out of reach. He is sorely lacking in money, looks for work with energy but never meets the required criteria. Tahar no longer knows whether he should continue to believe in a better future, in himself, in his studies. And is a degree in sociology really the right choice?