French Film Reviews: Rester Vertical, Directed by Alain Guiraudie

Writer-director Alain Guiraudie’s new provocative and genre-defying character study is about a filmmaker struggling with creativity, responsibility, fatherhood, and sexuality. Léo (Damien Bonnard), a blocked filmmaker seeking inspiration in the French countryside for an overdue script, begins an affair with a shepherdess (India Hair), with whom he has a child.

Combining the formal control of his 2013 breakthrough Stranger by the Lake with the shape-shifting fabulism of his earlier work, Alain Guiraudie’s new film, which often veers towards surreal black comedy, is a sidelong look at the human cycle of birth, procreation, and death, as well as his boldest riff on his signature subjects of freedom and desire.

Rester Vertical, Director: Alain Guiraudie, Cert: Unrated, Running time: 100 mins

From France Today magazine