Fresh from her remarkable, award-winning role in last year's Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Kristin Scott Thomas returns to the Festival opposite the smouldering Catalan actor Sergi Lopez in Catherine Corsini's gripping tale of a mid-life affair in southern France.
A gunshot erupts in the night, puncturing the quiet of a slumbering house. From this ominous opening, Partir jumps back in time several months. Suzanne (Scott Thomas) is preparing to return to work as a physiotherapist after years at home caring for her brusque doctor husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal), and her teenaged son and daughter. Samuel hires Ivan (Lopez) to build Suzanne her own backyard clinic. A former convict with a young daughter in Spain, Ivan responds cautiously at first to Suzanne's natural warmth. But when an accident brings the two closer together, social barriers give way to mutual attraction. As their relationship intensifies, Suzanne leaves her bewildered husband and children, abandoning her comfortable lifestyle for Ivan's cramped apartment. Practical matters soon disturb the lovers, however. Ivan can't work because of an injured leg, and Suzanne, thwarted by her aggrieved husband, is reduced to doing odd jobs. With money growing scarcer, she becomes increasingly desperate.
Corsini sets a simmering mood from the outset, contrasting the cool, clean aesthetic of the domestic space with Suzanne's sun-kissed vitality. Yet for all the heat of the affair, Partir is in essence the story of a family in freefall. While the daughter echoes her father's anger at Suzanne, the son remains loyal, and his attempts to support his mother as she veers further and further away from the woman he knew are truly touching.
As the frustrated wife prepared to risk everything for passion, Scott Thomas gives a rich, captivating performance. Lopez (best known for his villainous turns in Pan's Labyrinth and Dirty Pretty Things) deftly embodies the tension of a middle-aged labourer whose hard-won prudence is swept away by a force he can't resist, and Attal brims with the indignant, wounded rage of a husband betrayed. Corsini's skilful direction captures the subtleties of emotion and character as the story propels itself toward a shocking end.
Michèle Maheux
Catherine Corsini grew up in Seine-et-Marne, France. She moved to Paris at eighteen to become an actor but ended up making films. She has written and directed numerous features, including
Poker (88),
Les Amoureux (94),
La Nouvelle Eve (99),
La Répétition (01),
Mariées mais pas trop (03),
Les Ambitieux (06) and
Partir (09).