La Vie Promise

Isabelle Huppert gives one of her finest performances as Sylvia, an aging French prostitute whose 14-year-old epileptic daughter Laurence runs away from foster care and fatally stabs Sylvia's pimp when he turns violent. Aided by a car thief and possible escaped convict named Joshua, mother and daughter hastily seek refuge in the north of France, looking for asylum with the man who fathered Sylvia's other child, a boy she has not seen since he was an infant. La Vie Promise never fully connects all of the dots to explain what is happening or why the characters behave as they do, but it does have the refreshing appeal of a half-told tale in which the audience is challenged to fill in the blanks. Huppert's performance is astonishing, her body language a dramatic display of art: from the self-confident strut of a streetwalker shoehorned into an inappropriate fire engine red dress to the unsteady gait of an emotionally lost woman vainly trying to find serenity in a belated reunion with her lost son, she commands the screen with a physical presence that is truly hypnotic. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)