AFFFF23: Everybody Loves Jeanne @ Luna Leederville

France | 2022
Directed by: Céline Devaux
Starring: Blanche Gardin, Laurent Lafitte from the Comédie-Française, Maxence Tual, Nuno Lopes, Marthe Keller.
French with English subtitles.
Everybody Loves Jeanne is an all-too-relatable exploration of embarrassment and self-doubt by director Céline Devaux. Written with beautiful sensitivity and wickedly funny offbeat humour, this film stands as a reminder to not take ourselves or our failures too seriously.
In everyone else’s eyes, Jeanne (Blanche Gardin; Delete History, AF FFF21) is the golden girl – always the smartest, the prettiest and most likely to succeed. Behind the scenes Jeanne’s interior voice, personified in line-drawing animations as the ‘little ghost,’ quietly criticises her every move – wreaking havoc while her exterior stays cool, calm and collected. When Jeanne’s much-heralded ‘sea-cleaning machine’ fails monumentally, her life suddenly unravels. Out of a job and with nowhere to turn next, Jeanne’s internalised self-doubt begins to spill to the surface.
In an attempt to flee the scene and earn some fast cash, Jeanne heads to Lisbon with the hopes of selling her late mother’s flat. When she runs into a former classmate, Jean (Laurent Lafitte, We’ll End Up Together, AF FFF20) at the airport Jeanne instinctively wants to run and hide, after all – he’s not her type. While quick to brush him off, could Jean’s airy attitude and witty banter be the breath of fresh air she needs?