Élisa (1995)

She's a bit of a cynical rebel and she knows the score. She fights her way through a gallery of mean and pathetic creatures. But Marie is haunted by the memories of her mother, Elisa, who shot herself years ago. So here she goes with hell to offer to a man she never knew. A man who abandoned Marie 's mother. A man, no more of a shadow, said to be her father. 

And there we are, irresistibly taken in an electrifying dance written and directed by Jacques Becker, with co-writer Fabrice Carazo. Making alive such wild animals torn between despair and salvation takes more than actors. It takes beautiful souls, willing to jump in the fire of a raw and magnetic confrontation echoing the savage landscapes of French Britain. In Elisa, it took two fierce and delicate monsters of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu and the absolutely breath-taking Vanessa Paradis. 

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