Augustine or the subtle feminism of Alice Winocour (Critique)

France 4 offers the first film by Proxima director and review Paris, with Vincent Lindo, Soko and Chiara Mastroinanni.

Paris, winter 1885. At the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, Professor Charcot studies a mysterious disease: hysteria. Augustine, 19, becomes her favorite guinea pig, the star of her hypnosis demonstrations. Of study object, it will gradually become an object of desire.

In 2012, Alice Winocour (Proxima, review Paris…, soon back to the cinema with Stitchescarried by Angelina Jolie and Louis Garrel) marked First thanks to its first long, Augustine. A film to review this Saturday on France 4, as well as in replay. To be completed with Arte’s Super Document Sur Vincent Lindontitled Bloody heart.

Here is our criticism ofAugustine ::

For her first feature film, Alice Winocour seizes an exciting but overused subject: the relationships between a demiurge and his “Creature”. Two years ago, Abdellatif Kechiche gave a great variant with Black Venuswhich pushed the study of alienation that such a relationship very far. Implly. More modestly, Augustine endeavors to describe the rise of desire in the two protagonists, separated by a mountain of prejudices and class reflexes. If the deadly atmosphere of the beginning, which shows the heroine strolling with a closed eye, let hope for a visceral treatment at the borders of the fantastic, the intrigue, corseted and linear, is responsible for quickly putting the film back on the rails of the normality and romantic in costumes. We nevertheless retain his subtle feminism, nicely defended by Soko, facing a soberly intense Vincent Lindon.

Proxima: Eva Green in her best (critical) role