Rated: M
Directed by: Jean-Paul Salomé
Based on the Book by: Hannelore Cayre
Script Written by: Hannelore Cayre, Antoine Salomé
Produced by: Jean-Baptiste Dupont, Kristina Larsen
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Iris Bry, Hippolyte Girardot, Kamel Guenfoud, Liliane Rovére, Rebecca Marder, Farida Ouchani, Yasin Houicha, Rachid Guellaz.
French / Arabic with English subtitles
Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert) is having an existential crisis.
She’s working for the narc squad, translating Arabic to French, where she spends a lot of time listening to small-time dealers talk crap as they incriminate themselves and end up being put away for 3kg of hash.
But this one’s a big one: 1.5 ton.
So when the stash is lost, Patience sees an opportunity to finally make some money. To look after her mother in care (Liliane Rovére) and her two daughters.
To live the good life.
It’s like watching Patience evolve backwards in time. Back to the carefree girl in her father’s boat, fireworks patterning the sky ahead.
The film starts as a recording of voice like an electronic expression, Patience like those little green bars rising up and down as she turns one sound into another.
Her neighbour and building manager say the other tenants call her the ghost. Or they used to.
As Patience seizes her opportunity, she lifts, her colour rising with her confidence. She starts to wear red lipstick. Philippe (Hippolyte Girardot) her boyfriend and now chief of the narc squad comments that she might look like a small fragile woman, but her new confidence and strength makes him see her like the dealers he puts away. Little does he know.
La Daronne, AKA Mama Weed is a character study without getting too deep, more a message of, ‘I just like it when life finds its path.’
There’s a sweetness and I can relate to that disillusion when life suddenly reveals itself.
There’s some humour – Patience named because, as her mother says, she stayed in the womb for ten months. That requires patience. And there’re some thrills as, Mama Weed goes about trying to off-load 1.5 ton of hash. But it’s light-hearted as she deals with guys nick-named Scotch and Cocopuff.
And that consistent light-heartedness gets trying with the, I’m-an-older-lady-with-a-sharp-tongue, so these small-time dealers do whatever she wants?
But more than anything, La Daronne is a movie about a hardworking lady with a past, doing what she can because in the end, you can’t escape who you are. Or you can try. Patience? She turns around and embraces it.