While she had been working for two decades, Virginie Efira received much-deserved wider acclaim leading Benedetta and Sibyl a few years back. She returned to the festival circuit last year with a pair of staggeringly great performances, in Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children.
With both set to arrive in the U.S. over the next few months, along with playing at Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema over the next few days, the trailer for Winocour’s drama has now landed. The film, in which Efira picked up César award for Best Actress, follows her character trying to pick up the pieces of her life after experiencing a terrorist attack in Paris. Also starring Pacifiction lead Benoît Magimel and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, the drama is another example of Winocour’s mastery of immersing her audience in the headspace of her character with stellar sound design and precise cinematography.
Leonardo Goi said in his review, “It takes a few seconds for Mia’s life to unravel in Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories, then a whole lifetime to stitch it back together. Up until a fateful November night, the thirty-something (Virginie Efira) roams the French capital in a state of trouble-free bliss. She shares a luminous flat with her partner Vincent (Grégoire Colin) and an orange tabby cat; works as a Russian interpreter for politicians and intellectuals; and races through the City of Light on a Triumph, her outfit and helmet the same anthrax shade of the bike—a near superhero vision. It’s during a late-night ride that the sky suddenly breaks, forcing her to take shelter inside L’Étoile D’Or, a fancy bistro somewhere in the city center. She’s waiting for the rain to stop when a scream pierces the air and the first bullets start pelting tables and patrons.”
See the trailer below.
Revoir Paris opens Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema on March 2 and hits theaters June 23.