Official Selection - Competition 2009 / Villa Amalia / France, Switzerland 2008
When Ann sees her partner kissing another woman, she decides not only to end their long-standing relationship, but also to erase her past completely. She wants to start again with a clean slate, even though she’s not as young as she used to be. An old, abandoned house above the sea might be the place where she finds her footing again. No actress could have portrayed Ann with such conviction as Isabelle Huppert.
After Ann sees her partner Thomas kissing another woman, she refuses to have anything to do with him anymore. She doesn’t want to hear his explanations or excuses; she decides not only to end their long-standing relationship but to leave everything else far behind her. She sells the house and furniture, even the piano she loved, she stuffs her clothes into huge plastic sacks and takes them off to the dustbins. She simply erases her entire past, determined to begin again from scratch. The only person she trusts is her childhood friend Georges, whom she meets on that fateful night. One day, after visiting her old sick mother, Ann leaves for Italy and, on an island which she has covered on foot from one end to the other, she finds an old abandoned house above the sea. It’s called the Villa Amalia and it seems this is the place she has been looking for, which will help her to build a new life. The film was adapted from the novel by French writer Pascal Quignard which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, about a woman who resolves to reinvent herself. Isabelle Huppert as Ann is probably the only actress capable of portraying a character like this with such conviction, under a director she has worked with on several occasions in the past.
97 min / Color, 35 mm
International premiere
Director Benoît Jacquot
/ Screenplay Benoît Jacquot, Julien Boivent podle stejnojmenného románu / based on the novel of the same name by Pascal Quignard
/ Dir. of Photography Caroline Champetier
/ Music Bruno Coulais
/ Editor Luc Barnier
/ Producer Edouard Weil
/ Production EuropaCorp, Rectangle Production, Point Prod
/ Cast Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Xavier Beauvois, Maya Sansa, Clara Bindi
/ Contact EuropaCorp
Benoît Jacquot (b. 1947, Paris) began as an assistant to Bernard Borderie on one of the films from the Angélique series. During the 1970s he worked in television, where he filmed, among others, a remarkable documentary on Jacques Lacan. He worked with Marguerite Duras on the films Nathalie Granger (1972) and India Song (1975). His independent film debut came with The Musician Killer (L’assassin musicien, 1974). He was also noted for his film Closet Children (Les enfants du placard, 1977), after which he made the following films (selection): The Wings of the Dove (Les ailes de la colombe, 1981), A Single Girl (La fille seule, 1995), The School of Flesh (L’école de la chaire, 1998), Sade (2000), Adolphe (2002), Right Now (A tout de suite, 2004), The Untouchable (L’Intouchable, 2006), Villa Amalia (2008).
EuropaCorp
20 rue Ampere, 93200, Saint Denis Cedex
France
Phone: +33 1 55 99 50 00
E-mail: [email protected]
Louis Balsan
Producer, Sales Agent
Isabelle Huppert
Actress, Actress
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