In the Shadow of Women

Although it was made in 2015, In the Shadow of Women has the feel of a French New Wave film from the 1960s, shot in black-and-white and featuring an omniscient narrator voiced by Louis Garrel, the son of director Philippe Garrel. Pierre (Stanislas Merhar), a sad-eyed documentarian, is making a film about the French Resistance with his wife, Manon (Clotilde Courau), a script supervisor and editor. Pierre and Manon are so behind on the rent that their landlord threatens them with eviction. Manon's mother wishes that her daughter had followed through on a plan to become an interpreter, but Manon assures her that Pierre's films will catch on eventually. Of course, it would probably help if Pierre spent less time with Elisabeth (Léna Paugam), the grad student who he's been seeing on the side. If the affair is strictly physical for him, it means more to her--to the extent that she spies on Pierre and Manon, discovering that the latter is also cheating on Pierre, and she tells him so. As far as Pierre is concerned, it's natural for men to cheat, but not women, and so he withdraws even further. This is the kind of nuanced film where there are no real villains, although director Garrel is more sympathetic to the women, who may not be perfect, but are a lot easier to like. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)