SYNOPSICS
Sage femme (2017) is a French movie. Martin Provost has directed this movie. Catherine Deneuve,Catherine Frot,Olivier Gourmet,Quentin Dolmaire are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2017. Sage femme (2017) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
Claire is a midwife in a maternity hospital. She is humane and helpful and gives herself entirely to her patients. But despite that her life is not a bed of roses. Her hospital is about to close its doors and the devoted woman is determined not to work in the new modern hospital she regards as a "baby factory". Her personal life is no triumph either: she is single and does not make friends easily. To make matters worse, her student son Simon is gradually leaving home, as he is developing a relationship with his new sweetheart Lucie. It is the moment that Béatrice, her dead father's former mistress, chooses to resurface. The eccentric, spendthrift, sensual, amoral woman (Claire's exact opposite in fact) is really the last kind of person she needs to mix with. But Béatrice soon informs her that she suffers from brain cancer and she has nobody else to turn to. Torn between rejection and duty, what is Claire going to do?
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Sage femme (2017) Reviews
Beautiful performances from Catherine(s) The Greats
I really enjoyed this movie; in part as it starred my favorite actress from 2016: Catherine Frot, and her exquisite performance as 'Marguerite'. Frot has such stillness and poise on screen, but can also command great presence with minimal effort. Here, as the titular 'Midwife, Catherine Frot is delivered a role that gives her a chance to really shine. From the opening scenes her 'Claire' is a good woman; a skilled professional but lacking a personal life or much hope it seems. Blessed with a son she only sees fleetingly, her life is turned upside down when Beatrice played by Catherine Deneuve re-enters her radius after vanishing more than 3 decades before and causing Claire's father (one time lover of Beatrice) irreparable damage and an indelible imprint for young Claire. It is a fascinating dance that these two characters create through their often awkward scenes together. The film is only a success because of the chemistry between these two marvellous actresses. The narrative ambles all over the place, messily edited and at times a little predictable, but seeing these two share the screen is pure magic, and compensates for where the film is otherwise lacking. Beneath the choppy script lies some rich fabric about life and death; life changes and the power of forgiveness and redemption: always soulful pursuits for the big screen. I wanted this to be perfection; of course it is not. Catherine Deneuve deserves an Oscar nomination for this; she is unafraid to show her age; her flaws and creates a memorable screen character, a former good time gal, whose life is slipping away from her, as she clings to the joie devivre that had sustained her. It is a privilege to watch a screen icon; still beautiful, but displaying how beauty can fade. There is much dignity here from both Catherine the Greats!
Touching
Nice story line, great acting and a subtle and beautiful face to face between two complex and good-hearted women whose common feature is sweetly whispered at the end of the movie: for 2 women whose birth was not so welcome we've made it fairly well. It is all about memory, regret and will to go ahead. Great movie.
Birth Of A Gem
So far this film has attracted a mere three reviews here one of which is clearly the work of a Philistine. The movie stars two of the heaviest hitters in current French cinema and the only way to distinguish between them is to note that Ms Deneuve has been giving world-class performances just a tad longer than Ms Frot (nee 1956). With titans like this it is necessary only to let them read alternate pages of Le Figaro and the price of admission is money well spent. As it happens the plot is more than serviceable and director Provost throws in some tasty camera angles and the odd exquisite scene like Frot cycling home from a night shift through a Paris greeting a new dawn. A minor gem but a gem all the same.
a emotionally rich tale about two very different women
One of the many ways that European and Hollywood films differ is that the former is willing to dwell on the ordinary while the latter usually prefers to make stories bigger than they merit. The French film The Midwife (2017) is an example of storytelling that works simply by putting two very different women together and watching how they resolve the webs of emotion that have become tangled over time. As she approaches her 50th birthday, devoted midwife and single mother Claire (Catherine Frot) faces professional upheaval when her clinic must close. Her orderly conservative life is fractured further when the woman she blames for her father's suicide suddenly makes contact after 30 years. Opposites in every way, Beatrice (Catherine Deneuve) is manipulative, irresponsible, and a chronic gambler who loves fine wine and rich food. Claire's suspicion that Beatrice wants something is proved correct when the latter confides that she is dying, homeless and without support. Initial rejection turns into understanding for the midwife whose instincts are to nurture life, as she juggles the needs of Beatrice, the clinic's closure, and her neighbour's romantic advances. When her son announces he is quitting medical school and his girlfriend is pregnant, the always competent Claire confronts being helpless in a sea of change. These narrative strands and their complications are not what sustains the story. Rather it is the way these two icons of French cinema fill out their roles and the emotional connections they make. The flamboyant Beatrice is dramatic and unfiltered, while the restrained Claire is measured and well aware of the other's character flaws. One is a taker, the other a giver, yet both are engaging in different ways. As Beatrice confronts her fate, Claire continues bringing new life into the world in several very moving childbirth scenes that anchor the earthy realism and ordinariness of the story. The filming style dwells on warm and intimate moments, capturing both the charms and emotional swirls of French village life. Great acting and filming complements a script that finds uncontrived humour in everyday places. Richly nuanced performances in the European cinematic tradition are at the heart of The Midwife. This is not a film that offers rising tensions towards a big resolution. Instead you are likely to leave the cinema with a bitter-sweet afterglow that comes from sharing moments of unbridled joy, sadness, and the ambivalent ordinariness of our existence.
Charming Small Slice of Life
This French picture is the kind of small scale, unpretentious slice of life story that no one in the US is interested in making. The title character, Claire (Catherine Fort), is a 49 year old midwife (French sage-femme, literally "wise woman") at maternity a clinic in Mantes-la-Jolie, a town about 30 miles outside of Paris, making about 30,000 per year. In an earlier age, Claire would have been a nun, and a damn good one. She's a real crunchy granola type – has a tidy apartment in what looks like well kept, racially integrated public housing, bikes to work, doesn't own a car, spends her free time in her garden plot, is vegetarian but not vegan, and doesn't drink. Her only son is a second year med student (no father in evidence) who is about to make a life changing decision. The long haul truck driver who inherited the neighboring garden plot from his dad is making tentative advances. (His opening move is to offer Claire some seed potatoes, along with an explanation of why they cook up so much better than other spuds.) Claire is content with modest material comfort and using her experience to help other women. Unfortunately, the clinic where she works is going out of business soon, and Claire is repelled by the high-tech, big money modern obstetrics as practiced at the regional hospital. Into this modest life one day comes Beatrice (Catherine Deneuve). Beatrice is a bimbo emeritus at the end of her road. She's just been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, and she's looking to get in touch with Claire's father, Antoine, whose mistress she was 40 years ago. Antoine was a world class swimmer in his day, and Beatrice was happily shacked up with him and his daughter in an apartment on the Boulevard St. Germain. Then she left one day, for reasons that are never expressly stated, though it is implied that the money was running out, and she moved on to other men. After she left, Antoine killed himself. The suicide was in all the papers and is now in Wikipedia, but Beatrice had no clue. As she tells Claire, she never read the papers, and the internet is a mystery to her. Beatrice is pretty much alone in the world, living a cash basis life, supporting herself by a combination of gambling and hocking the jewelry men gave her over the years, and squatting in the apartment of a former lover who went back to Lebanon when the civil war ended. Red meat, red wine, cigarettes and the kindness of strangers have brought her this far, and she sees no reason to change just because she has terminal cancer. But Beatrice is no Blanche duBois. She's tough, she's shrewd, and she's been manipulating people (usually men) with fake helplessness all her life. Although she blames Beatrice for her father's suicide, Claire finds herself drawn into taking care of her. The experience loosens Claire up a bit but doesn't fundamentally change her. There are some arguments, some confidences are exchanged, but there is no grand reveal and no tearful reconciliation. Claire also finds herself slowly getting involved with the truck driver, a solid, unpretentious guy who loves good food and good wine. It's charming and, since it a French movie, there is an outdoor meal. Beatrice departs, and life goes on. You find yourself getting fully involved in this Frenchwoman's life for two hours.