Arte is programming the heartbreaking Amanda, with Vincent Lacoste, for the commemoration of November 13

In Amanda, Mikhaël Hers films the mourning of a young man as a major stage in his entry into adulthood. Attention, large score.

On this sad anniversary of the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015, Arte is rebroadcasting Amanda, by Mikhaël Hers, this Thursday. A very appropriate choice, the film having as its central theme the grieving work of the survivors. When it was released at the cinema in 2018, Première was amazed by the director’s treatment and the magnificent performance of Vincent Lacoste as a bereaved brother becoming the surrogate father of his niece. Our review:

Coincidence: last month the very sensitive Our battles of Guillaume Senez. Olivier’s story (Romain Duris), left by the mother of his children and suddenly forced to take on the responsibilities of a single father. The departure of his wife was partly repaired by a female choir which would help him to be reborn. Duris appeared more striking than ever.

The same learning device is at work in the third film of Mikhaël Hers (Memory Lane, This Summer Feeling), also revealing a Vincent Lacoste unpublished. David is 24 years old and lives in a sort of waking carefree state. She stops abruptly the day her older sister dies, leaving her to take care of her 7-year-old niece. Then begins a double task for David: mourning with, grafted to his fingertips, Amanda’s little orphaned hand which he must manage like a father.

Different women (a student, an aunt, a mother) will mark his path to reconstruction, without forgetting Amanda, both the youngest and the most proactive because she is very demanding. The reverberation of absence, summer seen as a painful season, walking in the city like a bandage for mourning… Hers masterfully reworks his favorite themes.

They are taken care of by a moving and moving Vincent Lacoste like never before, who continues his exploration of a more adult register. He lends David his candid tone, this offbeat presence in reality, which the shock of death will shatter sharply. To take it somewhere else. Higher, bigger.