02-01-2022, 05:02 AM
Best New IDU Film:
The Girls of Zhou’s Landing (2021, dir. Sandra Hu)
This 2021 adaptation of the 1989 novel of the same name follows the three sisters of the Bonnin family (plus their younger brother Didier, but he’s “just a baby so he doesn’t really count”) as they navigate young adulthood in rural Lienne province against a backdrop of the ongoing ethno-religious violence of the 1970s. In the snowy northern province of Lienne, the latest territory to join Laeral, father Claude is a soldier frequently mobilized due to the threat of violence from separatist terror attacks, keeping him frequently away from the family home in remote Zhou’s Landing. Tender-hearted matriarch Marie-Laure is thus left to mind her three daughters as they each face the tumultuous challenges of their adolescence. Eldest daughter Evelyne, a volunteer nurse treating the wounded at the local hospital, is courted by her colleague, the deep-pocketed doctor Arthur Park, and the poor yet charming Jacques Doucet. Middle daughter Marylise dreams of becoming a pilot, but despairs of ever finding a teacher who will accept a woman as a student. And youngest daughter Claire, just 14, finds her life turned upside-down when an eye infection begins to steal away her vision. Between the moments of drama and terror in The Girls of Zhou’s Landing, from the nighttime drive in a plush sedan when Arthur confesses his love to Evelyne to the bomb blast which the Bonnin girls fear has killed their father, are moments of striking visual beauty and childlike innocence, from a winter morning spent ice-skating on the frozen lake to the New Year’s Eve sequence where the tenacious Marylise follows Evelyne as she sneaks out to a surreptitious party. A film executed faithfully to the original book’s depiction of the author’s own childhood, The Girls of Zhou’s Landing is a love letter to the period and to girlhood in general. French-language, 136 minutes
Directed by Sandra Hu; starring:
Aurélie Lachapelle as Evelyne
Karine Paquet-Sung as Marylise
Anne Royer as Claire
Amaline Parmentier as Marie-Laure Bonnin
Gael Dufour as Claude
Eddy Tsui as Jacques
Chang Hyun-shik as Arthur
The Girls of Zhou’s Landing (2021, dir. Sandra Hu)
This 2021 adaptation of the 1989 novel of the same name follows the three sisters of the Bonnin family (plus their younger brother Didier, but he’s “just a baby so he doesn’t really count”) as they navigate young adulthood in rural Lienne province against a backdrop of the ongoing ethno-religious violence of the 1970s. In the snowy northern province of Lienne, the latest territory to join Laeral, father Claude is a soldier frequently mobilized due to the threat of violence from separatist terror attacks, keeping him frequently away from the family home in remote Zhou’s Landing. Tender-hearted matriarch Marie-Laure is thus left to mind her three daughters as they each face the tumultuous challenges of their adolescence. Eldest daughter Evelyne, a volunteer nurse treating the wounded at the local hospital, is courted by her colleague, the deep-pocketed doctor Arthur Park, and the poor yet charming Jacques Doucet. Middle daughter Marylise dreams of becoming a pilot, but despairs of ever finding a teacher who will accept a woman as a student. And youngest daughter Claire, just 14, finds her life turned upside-down when an eye infection begins to steal away her vision. Between the moments of drama and terror in The Girls of Zhou’s Landing, from the nighttime drive in a plush sedan when Arthur confesses his love to Evelyne to the bomb blast which the Bonnin girls fear has killed their father, are moments of striking visual beauty and childlike innocence, from a winter morning spent ice-skating on the frozen lake to the New Year’s Eve sequence where the tenacious Marylise follows Evelyne as she sneaks out to a surreptitious party. A film executed faithfully to the original book’s depiction of the author’s own childhood, The Girls of Zhou’s Landing is a love letter to the period and to girlhood in general. French-language, 136 minutes
Directed by Sandra Hu; starring:
Aurélie Lachapelle as Evelyne
Karine Paquet-Sung as Marylise
Anne Royer as Claire
Amaline Parmentier as Marie-Laure Bonnin
Gael Dufour as Claude
Eddy Tsui as Jacques
Chang Hyun-shik as Arthur