Alice

Mackerras also shows a fair amount of restraint in her direction, choosing to focus closely on Piponnier’s face and body language. There’s so much said in Alice’s slouched shoulders, exasperated sighs and deer-in-the-headlights stares when she awkwardly meets her first clients, and none of it is lost in the heat of the moment. It also speaks to the low budget resourcefulness of Mackerras, who used her own apartment for the one in the film and cast her son in the role of Alice’s child. But outside the day-to-day grind of work and shuffling between her nice home and even fancier hotels, Alice spends some of her rare in-between time on the street, having fun with her son Jules or catching up with Lisa. Through the work of cinematographer Mickaël Delahaie, Alice lives the life of an everyday Parisian, living mostly away from the tourist hubs but still within the city’s beauty. Even in some of Alice’s most desperate moments, things never seem dramatically dark or empty. The city moves on around her, the lights and sounds uninterrupted, unaware of her internal heartbreak. 

“Alice,” winner of last year’s South by Southwest Grand Jury Prize, drives home its message a touch too heavy near the end, emphasizing its point on the double standard against women in sex work at the expense of well-tuned drama before it. There’s some uncomfortable—but realistic—arm twisting to prove its point, but when the credits roll, there’s a well-earned sigh of relief. Despite those bumps, Piponnier’s performance and Mackerras’s empathetic vision are still very rewarding. The movie avoids casting a judgmental light on escorts and instead allows its main character to use it as a way to find herself and her independence, a sign that the conversations around and depictions of sex work in media are hopefully evolving towards better, nuanced stories—at least in France.

Available on Virtual Cinema today, 5/15.

— 2019 Hollywood Movie Review