L’ombre des femmes

“No man is worth sacrificing your career for,” her mother warns. But Manon (Clotilde Coureau) loves Pierre (Stanislas Merhar) so much that she doesn’t mind playing second fiddle to him. She helps him make his documentaries. The couple turns out not to be quite as stable as it looks, however. Affairs, jealousy and fierce quarrels in an unkempt apartment; a film by Philippe Garrel is of course not complete without these ingredients.
Yet In the Shadow of Women is primarily about romance. Garrel explicitly takes sides with the women in the story. Just as his previous film, Jealousy, started with the death of his father, this time his deceased mother was the source of inspiration. Garrel wrote the script with two women and a man (Oscar winner Jean-Claude Carrière), and each introduced different elements. Of course the city of Paris plays an important role again, captured in glorious black-and-white.

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